A rapid decrease in unemployment is a short-term priority to limit social problems and reduce the risk of rising structural unemployment. To this end, strengthening labour market policies to sustain labour demand is key. The public works programme should remain temporary and become more focused...

France has seen a marked deterioration in its export performance in the last 10 years or so. Previous empirical research pointed out that weak export performance was due to i) vigorous domestic demand; ii) lower mark-ups due to head-to-head competition with Germany; iii) low non-price...

The forthcoming EU enlargement raises a series of questions related to the new entrants' entry to Exchange Rate Mechanism II and their subsequent adoption of the single currency. In this paper, the issue of how to determine the central parity for the acceding countries with which to enter ERM-II...

This paper provides an analysis of co-movements between real and financial variables in three new EU member countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) and the euro area. It focuses on the co-movement between real credit granted to firms and real industrial output on the one hand, and...

France has seen a marked deterioration in its export performance in the last 10 years or so. Previous empirical research pointed out that weak export performance was due to i) vigorous domestic demand; ii) lower mark-ups due to head-to-head competition with Germany; iii) low non-price...