Evidence shows that financial integration in the euro area is retrenching at a quicker pace than outside the union. Home bias persists: Governments compete on funding costs by supporting ‘their’ banks with massive state aids, which distorts the playing field and feeds the risk-aversion loop....

As the Eurozone debt crisis reaches a turning point, this Policy Brief argues for a more organised intervention by the ECB to stop contagion through the creation of a quantitative easing programme, coupled with a political agreement among member states on a more federalist budget for the...

Takeovers are one-off events, altering control and strategy within an organisation. But the chances of becoming the target of a bid, even where remote, daily influence corporate decision-making. Takeover rules are therefore central to company law and the balance of power among managers,...

This study offers an in-depth economic analysis of the two main proposals for the creation of a European unemployment insurance scheme. One proposes the creation of a harmonised European unemployment benefit scheme that would apply automatically to every eligible unemployed person. The...

One frequently hears the question posed in the title to this report, but there is little systematic analytical literature on the issue. Fragmented evidence or anecdotes dominate debates among EU regulatory decision-makers and in European business, insofar as there is a genuine debate at all....

This CEPS Special Report investigates ways to enhance the legitimacy of economic governance in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) without introducing Treaty changes. It suggests changes in the governance framework at both the institutional and economic level. Input-oriented legitimacy can be...

Deviations of policy interest rates from the levels implied by the Taylor rule have been persistent before the financial crisis and increased especially after the turn of the century. Compared to the Taylor benchmark, policy rates were often too low. This paper provides evidence that both...

Investment has declined in the euro area since the start of the economic and financial crisis, but this does not mean that there is necessarily an ‘investment gap’, explains Daniel Gros in this CEPS Policy Brief. Investment was probably above a sustainable level due to the credit boom before...

Has inflation targeting (IT) conferred benefits in terms of economic growth on countries that followed this particular monetary policy strategy during the crisis period 2007-12? This paper answers this question in the affirmative. Countries with an IT monetary regime with flexible exchange rates...

The significant gains in export market shares made in a number of vulnerable euro-area crisis countries have not been accompanied by an appropriate improvement in price competitiveness. This paper argues that, under certain conditions, firms consider export activity as a substitute for serving...