Le choc démographique des baby boomers, l’allongement de la durée de la vie et le vieillissement de la population imposent d’engager aujourd’hui des politiques dont les effets futurs garantiront la soutenabilité des comptes sociaux et en particulier ceux des systèmes de retraites. Le...

The euro area, after a poor growth performance in 2002, has stepped aside in 2003 the word economic recovery. Concurrently, as was easily predictable since its inception, all the flaws of the SGP emerged once the European economy started to loose speed. Compared to the strongly proactive fiscal...

While a number of studies have demonstrated the importance of factor utilization in economic analysis, the impact of operating hours and/or hours of work in the production function remains largely unknown, particularly in terms of the capital operating time. Using French data on industrial firms...

In this paper, we develop an analytical framework for the estimation of potential output and output gaps for the euro area combining multivariate filtering techniques with the production function approach. The advantage of this methodology lies in the fact that it combines a model based approach...

The European "sovereignty paradox" may be summarized as follows: National States and/or the European Parliament, that are the instances in which resides the democratic legitimacy to implement policies and to react to events affecting the economy, are not endowed with the instruments to act or...

Les discriminations dont les femmes font l’objet dans les pays européens sont à la fois similaires et différentes. Leurs multiples facettes peuvent être analysées à partir d’une typologie de pays, qui aide à dégager les traits communs, mais qui ne rendent compte...

While there is consensus on the need to raise the time spent in the market by European women, it is not clear how these goals should be achieved. Tax wedges, assistance in the job search process, and part-time jobs are policy instruments that are widely debated in policy circles. The paper...

This paper develops a theoretical model of location choice under imperfect competition to formalize the notion that firms prefer to locate “where the markets are.” The profitability of a location depends on a term that weights demand in all locations by accessibility. Using a sample of...

Unlike many other contracts, employment contracts are subject to various external administrative procedures governing separations, ranging from compulsory severance payments and advance notice periods (usually seniority based), to collective layoff procedures (usually depending on the firm’s...

This chapter examines empirical strategies that have been or could be used to evaluate the importance of agglomeration and trade models. This theoretical approach, widely known as “New Economic Geography” (NEG), emphasizes the interaction between transport costs and firm-level scale...