Productivity-enhancing structural reforms are crucial to the economic prospects of the EU. Indeed, such reforms are even more urgent in the current environment in which many economies are reaching the limits of the policy support they can provide to shore up demand. Moreover, even as some of the...

We estimate a three-country model using 1995 2013 data for Germany, the Rest of the Euro Area (REA) and the Rest of the World (ROW) to analyse the determinants of Germany s current account (CA) surplus after the launch of the euro. Our results suggest that the German surplus reflects a...

This paper uses a multi region DSGE model with collateral constrained households and residential investment to examine the effectiveness of fiscal policy stimulus measures in a credit crisis. The paper explores alternative scenarios which differ by the type of budgetary measure, its length, the...

This paper studies the effects of labour market reforms on the functional distribution of income in a DSGE model (Roeger et al., 2008) with skill differentiation, in which households supply three types of labour: low-, medium- and high-skilled. The households receive income from labour, tangible...

This paper studies the effectiveness of Euro Area (EA) fiscal policy, during the recent financial crisis, using an estimated New Keynesian model with a bank. A key dimension of policy in the crisis was massive government support for banks—that dimension has so far received little attention in...

The German federal government's fiscal consolidation package, announced in June, is designed to permanently reduce the federal deficit to a new target level. This article uses a three-region version of the European Commission's QUEST model to gauge the impact of the package on Germany and the...

Climate change is a problem for all of us and must be tackled as a priority, not just as the responsibility of national economic policies. It has not only environmental but also economic and social consequences. Climate change can change people's daily lives, strongly affecting their health and...

In this paper, we present the first dynamic scoring exercise linking a multi-country microsimulation and DSGE models for all countries of the European Union. We illustrate our novel methodology analysing a hypothetical tax reform for Belgium. We then evaluate real tax reforms in Italy and...

In this paper, we present a dynamic scoring analysis of tax reforms for European countries. In this analysis we account for the feedback effects resulting from the adjustment in the labour market and for the economy-wide reaction to tax policy changes. We combine the microsimulation model...

Much of the literature on flat tax reforms has highlighted the benefits of introducing flat personal income tax systems in transition economies. The advocated benefits of flat tax systems range from their simplicity, higher compliance and lower distortionary effects on growth and employment....