The answer to competition from emerging countries with low wage costs must be very different according to the affected sector. We need to draw a distinction between manufacturing industry and services that can be relocated and other sectors: consumer services, retail, construction, most business...

We study the vulnerability of 130 banks directly supervised by the European Central Bank's Single Supervisory Mechanism. Illustrative stress tests using banks' balance sheet data reveal that significant stress prevails in the euro area's smaller and medium-sized banks, many of them located in...