This paper uses a Global Vector Auto-Regression (GVAR) model in a panel of 21 emerging market and advanced economies to investigate the factors behind the dynamics of global trade flows, with a particular view on the issue of global trade imbalances and on the conditions of their unwinding. The...

The unprecedented drop in international trade during the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 has mainly been analysed at the macroeconomic or sectoral level. However, exporters who are heterogeneous in terms of productivity, size or external financial dependence should be...

The rapid transition of China from a closed agricultural society to an industrial powerhouse has been associated with a rapid increase in the share of China in world trade. As the world is taking the full measure of this phenomenon, tensions have been arising ranging from holding China partly...

Productivity performance in European countries has been a policy concern for some time. This paper shows that productivity can be enhanced by product market policies which, by increasing competition and efficiency, facilitate higher rates of firms' entry and exit (i.e., firm churning). Drawing...

This study extends a thick modelling tool for aggregated euro area real private consumption of de Bondt et al. (2019) to the four largest euro area countries. The suite of error correction models performs well in and out of sample. The ranges and averages of estimated elasticities are, however,...

We review the determinants of the discretionary fiscal policy action of governments in the euro area and in other advanced economies during the past 20 years. This is done by estimating fiscal reaction functions using dynamic panel techniques and country-by-country estimates. The results suggest...

This paper documents, for the first time in a systematic manner, the link between labor cost and price inflation in the euro area. Using country and sector quarterly data over the period 1985Q1-2018Q1 we find a strong link between labor cost and price inflation in the four major economies of the...

Using microdata from the second wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, we investigate the accuracy of property values estimated by homeowners - so called "self-assessed" house prices - and explore the drivers of possible deviations of these prices from official hedonic house price...