This paper presents a reappraisal of unemployment movements in the European Union. Our analysis is based on the chain reaction theory of unemployment, which focuses on (a) the interaction among labor market adjustment processes, (b) the interplay between these adjustment processes and the...

This paper summarises the key findings of a recent study on the impact of Eastern Enlargement of the European Union (EU) on labour markets in the current Member States. The study focuses on three main channels, along which enlargement may affect labour markets in the EU, namely i) trade, ii)...

In this study we forecast the term structure of FIBOR/EURIBOR swap rates by means of recursive vector autoregressive (VAR) models. In advance, a principal components analysis (PCA) is adopted to reduce the dimensionality of the term structure. To evaluate ex-ante forecasting performance for...

The paper proposes a data driven adaptive model selection strategy. The selection crite- rion measures economic exante forecasting content by means of trading implied cash flows. Empirical evidence suggests that the proposed strategy is neither exposed to selection bias nor to the risk of...

For reasons of analytical tractability, new economic geography (NEG) models treat geography in a very simple way: attention is either confined to a simple 2-region or to an equidistant multi-region world. As a result, the main predictions regarding the impact of e.g. diminishing trade costs are...

We conduct a comparative analysis of Labor Market Policies and outcomes for the EU member states, for the period 2000-2005. We document the main differences in Labor Market Policies across EU members, including new member states after 2004. We focus on indicators of policy generosity...

This paper documents some of the patterns in modern microeconomic data on young people’s employment, attitudes and entrepreneurial behaviour. Among other sources, the paper uses the Eurobarometer Surveys; the Labour Force Surveys from Canada and the Current Population Survey in the United...