Since the global financial crisis, the Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN), traditionally consisting mainly of countries' own foreign exchange reserves with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acting as a backstop, has expanded significantly with the continued accumulation of reserves, the...

Cross-border financial integration has increased the need to make suitable multilateral arrangements for global financial cooperation and oversight - these include more intense and more effective financial sector surveillance by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The financial sector has a...

The International Monetary Fund has significantly improved its surveillance of the EU and the euro area, along the lines suggested by the Fund’s 2011 Triennial Surveillance Review and in application of its 2012 Integrated Surveillance Decision. Nonetheless, there is still margin for further...

Global trade has been exceptionally weak over the past four years. While global trade grew at approximately twice the rate of GDP prior to the Great Recession, the ratio of global trade to GDP growth has declined to about unity since 2012. This paper assesses to what extent the change in the...

This paper uses information from a rich firm-level survey on wage and price-setting procedures, in around 15,000 firms in 15 European Union countries, to investigate the relative importance of internal versus external factors in the setting of wages of newly hired workers. The evidence suggests...

This paper investigates the wage-setting behaviour of Irish firms. We place particular emphasis on the use of flexible pay components and examine how these allow firms to deal with shocks requiring a reduction in costs without having to cut base wages. The results presented in this paper are...

We study the effects of carbon tax and revenue recycling across the income distribution in the Republic of Ireland. In absolute terms, a carbon tax of €20/tCO2 would cost the poorest households less than €3/week and the richest households more than €4/week. A carbon tax is regressive,...

Increasing earnings inequality has been an important feature of the US and UK labour markets in recent years. The increase appears to be related to an increased demand for skilled labour and an increase in the returns to education. In this paper we examine what has happened to earnings...