This report analyses the main developments in housing finance in the euro area in the decade, covering the period from 1999 to 2007. It looks at mortgage indebtedness, various characteristics of loans for house purchase, the funding of such loans and the spreads between the interest rates on...

The US economy has endured an exceptionally severe recession caused by the measures put in place to contain the spread of COVID-19. This occasional paper assesses the impact of this crisis on key labour market variables, such as (un-) employment, wages and productivity, and highlights the...

We present non-linear models to capture the turning points in global economic activity as well as in advanced and emerging economies from 1980 to 2017. We first estimate Markov Switching models within a univariate framework. These models support the relevance of three business cycle regimes...

We present non-linear binary Probit models to capture the turning points in global economic activity as well as in advanced and emerging economies from 1980 to 2016. For that purpose, we use four different business cycle dating methods to identify the regimes (upswings, downswings). We find that...

We examine job flows in the 1990s for a sample of 13 European countries. By using a dataset of continuing firms that covers all sectors, we find firm characteristics to be important determinants of job flows, with smaller and younger firms within services typically having a larger degree of job...

This paper provides an empirical study of the determinants of female participation decisions in the European Union. The analysis is performed by estimating participation equations for different age groups (i.e. young, prime-age and older females), using annual data for a panel of 12 EU-15...

This paper aims, first, at assessing the relative importance of working age population and participation rates to explain labour force developments in the euro area between 1983 and 2000. It also compares participation rates in the euro area vis-à-vis the US, considering age and gender groups....

The study aims at describing productivity growth in the manufacturing sector for a selected panel of five European countries using firm-level data. The paper explores the empirical regularities of firm productivity distribution across countries. In particular, we assess the degree of persistence...

We use a cohort based model to analyse determinants of labour force participation for disaggregated groups of workers in the euro area and the five largest euro area countries. The model captures age and cohort effects as indicators of (unobserved) determinants of participation behaviour. We use...

We review the different migration episodes in Spain since the beginning of the 20th century, with special emphasis on the pieces of empirical work that have tried to identify the factors behind them. Migrations abroad for the 1900-1950 and 1950-1973 periods are considered. Foreign immigration is...