National fiscal frameworks can complement the EU budgetary surveillance procedure. Poland has traditionally had a debt rule, but it did not discourage governments from running high deficits. High expenditure (mainly on social benefits) has been identified as one of the main sources of large...

Following several years of low growth Germany is presently enjoying a relatively strong recovery. With unemployment falling at record speed and fiscal consolidation progressing, the upswing is set to continue in spite of uncertainties surrounding the VAT increase of January 2007. This Country...

Since the early 1990s Croatia has managed a rather successful transition process with solid growth, low inflation and exchange rate stability. Better integration into international financial markets, capital account liberalisation and banking sector reform have facilitated access to foreign...

In 2006 the external net borrowing requirement of the Spanish economy was almost 8% of GDP, after having been in balance between 1993 and 1998. This increased borrowing requirement is the financial mirror image of a growth model, in which corporate and households' investments are generating an...

In recent years, Slovakia has introduced wide-ranging reforms in the tax, pension, social and health care systems. These reforms have increased incentives to work, to create jobs and to invest, and have thus fostered growth and economic catching-up. The supply-side driven growth has so far...

This Country Focus analyses and interprets the statistical characteristics of the Polish business cycle. It also identifies leading and lagging variables and shows that the economic fluctuations in Poland differ to some extent from those in other emerging and mature economies, with Polish growth...

Wage-setting systems are a key element of the labour market institutional setup. In Europe, they vary considerably, reflecting the diversity of existing economic and social models. Over the long run, different wage-setting models can have a significant impact on macroeconomic performance,...

This Country Focus studies the impact of changes in government expenditure in Hungary over the period 1997Q1 to 2005Q4 using a structural vector-autoregressive model. The results suggest that discretionary shifts in government expenditure have a mixed impact on the economy. In particular, while...

The Czech financial sector has changed dramatically since transition. In fifteen years, it has developed from a state-owned mono-bank into a privatised bank-based financial system with developing capital and private equity markets. This country focus analyses the development of the financial...

The number of new dwellings built in Spain more than doubled between 1997 and 2004. Provisional estimates indicate that the figure might currently be over 800,000. Strikingly, this impressive response of supply to demand has not put a brake on housing prices, which have also doubled in real...