There seems to be a broad consensus in Europe that there is a European Social Model (ESM), typical of European societies and that this model should be protected and developed. But the ESM is an ambiguous notion: is it a simple description of the actual state of European societies? Is this a...

This paper describes recent trends on the efficiency of stabilisers in the European Union. Using both macro evidence on the cyclical sensitivity of budget deficit to economic activity, and micro evidence on the tax and expenditure profiles, we conclude, in agreement with the recent literature,...

Negotiators in Geneva are still struggling to conclude the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, after seven years of negotiations, many people - and especially many industrialists in Europe and the United States - are not convinced that the...

Two stage least squares are a popular method of estimation of spatial auto-regressive models, where the dependent variable in an area is a function of the value of the same variable in contiguous areas. Existing literature on this topic points out, however, that this creates problems of...

The debate on public finances’ sustainability has long focused on the conditions for the accumulation of debt. This implied that, empirically, the analyses revolved around estimations of dynamic versions of the debt accumulation equation, through unit root tests and cointegration tests between...

The current crisis is testing the capacity of policy makers to give adequate answers to the possibility of a major financial meltdown. The crisis began in the subprime sector, a relatively small segment of the mortgage industry. It is thanks to an insufficiently regulated system of financial...

La crise financière qui s’est déclenchée l’été dernier sur l’ensemble des marchés est partie du segment le plus à risque du crédit hypothécaire américain. Prenant appui en 2002 sur un marché déjà tendu, le dernier cycle de l’immobilier a bénéficié de conditions...

Since 1990, a growing number of countries have adopted inflation targeting (IT) around the world. Empirical evidence on its advantages has been mixed so far, and most assessments have been based on a control group methodology. In this paper, using a MSVAR technique, we assess the adoption of IT...

Ce papier propose une revue synthétique du lien entre vieillissement, capacités cognitives, productivité et employabilité des seniors. Il s’agit notamment d’analyser comment les changements technologiques et organisationnels observés sur les dix dernières années — largement...

This paper analyzes empirically the effect of spatial agglomeration of activities on the productivity of firms using French individual firm data from 1996 to 2004. This allows us to control for endogeneity biases that the estimation of agglomeration economies typically encounters. French firms...