Prospects for the European Union and the Euro Area look sound, but there is a risk of a significant slowdown in the US. Central banks in the European Union should stand ready to offset any deflationary impacts from abroad. The appreciation of the euro and lower oil prices should help moderate...

Le vieillissement de la population est un phénomène commun à l’ensemble des pays de l’Union européenne. Ainsi, pour six pays étudiés (Allemagne, Espagne, France, Italie, Royaume-Uni, Suède), la proportion des plus de 65 ans passerait de 16,5 % en 2000 à 28 % en 2050 selon les...

Will Europe be immune to the slowdown of growth in the US? According to the US treasury secretary Paul O’Neill it will be illusory to believe that Europe will avoid to be hit by business conditions in the other side of the Atlantic. In my last briefing paper I tried to sketch the broad reasons...

Je pense donc que, si le capitalisme a survécu, c’est précisément parce que nos systèmes sont des systèmes impurs : c’est cette impureté qui permet leur permanence. C’est cette impureté qu’il ne faut pas oublier lorsqu’on propose des réformes structurelles qui nous feraient...

This item has no abstract

this item has no abstract

This item has no abstract

In a dynamically efficient economy, can a government roll its debt forever and avoid the need to raise taxes? In a series of examples of economies with zero growth, this paper shows that such Ponzi games may be infeasible even when the average rate of return on bonds is negative, and may be...

We explore the history of the Austro-Hungarian currency through the floating exchange rate regime of the 1870s and 1880s and the adoption of the gold standard in 1892. Though actual convertibility remained an elusive dream, the A-H Bank was able to stabilise the currency by establishing a...

We investigate the relationship between financial wealth, reservation wages, and labor market transitions. Wealth is assumed to affect the level of the reservation wage and the employment probability. We test for the validity of this assumption by estimating a simultaneous‐equations model of...