We conduct a case study of the role of organized labor in the restructuring experience of two coal mining regions in the 1990's: Ostrava in the Czech Republic and Jiu Valley in Romania. Under similar external circumstances, the Ostrava region undertook gradual restructuring from early on whereas...

What are the drivers of business cycle fluctuations? And how many are there? By documenting strong and predictable co-movement of real variables during the business cycle in a sample of advanced economies, we argue that most business cycle fluctuations are driven by one major factor. The...

This paper discusses comovement between inflation and output in the euro area. The strength of the comovement may not be apparent at first sight, but is clear at business cycle frequencies. Our results suggest that at business cycle frequency, the output and core inflation comovement is high and...