This documentation analyses the structure of educational attainment in France and Germany. While France and Germany share in many respects similar socioeconomic structures, they sharply differ with respect to their educational system. First, the three-tiered secondary school system in Germany,...

Eine technologisch leistungsfähige und innovative Volkswirtschaft basiert auf einer großen Zahl qualifizierter Menschen. Ein Bildungssystem sollte daher möglichst viele junge Menschen zu möglichst hohen Ausbildungsabschlüssen führen, ohne dabei die Qualität der Ausbildung und die...

This paper is organised as follows. Section 1 explains why issues concerning central counterparty clearing houses are of direct concern to central banks and why a comparison of the European and the US situation is of interest. Section 2 provides a comparative overview of the organisation of...

The paper takes a closer look at the institutional set-up of financial markets in the United States of America and investigates whether the US can serve as a model for the EU. The overall conclusion is that the US institutional set-up as a whole does not seem to be a suitable benchmark for the...

This paper provides a description and a discussion of some important aspects relating to recent productivity developments in the euro area. Following decades of stronger gains in the euro area than in the US, labour productivity growth has fallen behind that in the US in recent years. This...

Global financial integration has been associated with divergent patterns of real convergence and the current account in emerging markets. While countries in emerging Asia have been running sizeable current account surpluses, countries in emerging Europe have been facing large current account...