Economic recovery post-COVID-19 will be structured around answering a number of fundamental questions. It is necessary to take stock of the extent of the recovery and of the transformation our economies have experienced in the last year and a half.

The decline of “natural real interest rates” during the last three decades is a common phenomenon in all advanced economies and can be explained by a number of structural factors: the downward trend in potential growth; population ageing, which has led to higher savings rates in many...

Faced with the impossibility of reaching a political agreement to review the fiscal treaties, the Commission could limit itself to applying the current rules with flexibility, which would maintain an ambiguous situation: much ado about nothing.

The fiscal framework needs in practice to achieve a balance between, on the one hand, effective budgetary rules that allow governments to commit to sound policies and, on the other, judgements and discretion in how these are applied so that the framework adequately reflects the complexity of the...

The rapid recovery of demand combined with supply constraints has led to rising prices during the past months. This is evident in oil and gas markets, but also in international trade, which has been thrown out of step by bottlenecks at Asian ports. This situation creates a trade-off for the...

The lockdowns and stimulus programmes that governments have adopted to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic crisis have affected the distribution of income and production within and between countries. Considering both, current evidence indicates that the EU-wide and global...

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic crisis as well as demographic and climate change pose major challenges for public finances. This article deals with the implications of demographic trends in Switzerland, i.e. the progressive ageing of the population and its impact on the country’s public...