Narratives that portray macroeconomic policies in Japan as unlike ones pursued in other large economies persist. I revisit how several factors, including monetary, fiscal, and demographic factors impact Japan, the US, and the euro area. Panel VARs driven by factors or observed macroeconomic...

Variations among the diverse pension systems in the member states of the European Union (EU) hamper labor market mobility across national borders and also among firms within the countries of the EU. From a macroeconomic perspective, and in the light of demographic pressure, this paper argues...

Increasing evidence shows that in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, in the euro area, the relationship between price inflation and economic slack became stronger. Instead, there is no clear evidence of a strong(er) relationship between wage inflation and unemployment. In this paper,...

In the past five years, the inflation in the euro area has been well below the European Central Bank’s (ECB) aimed inflation rate of close to but below two percent for achieving its objective of price stabilization in the medium term. The present analysis shows that expectations of low...

This paper analyses euro area Beveridge curves at the euro area aggregate and country level over the past 25 years. Using an autoregressive distributed lag model, we find a significant outward shift and flattening of the euro area Beveridge curve since the onset of the crisis, but considerable...

In this paper, we show that in order to obtain a sound identification of Euro Area monetary policy shocks, one needs to deal with the interaction of the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve. In other words, a proper identification of monetary policy shocks for an open economy like...

The paper deals first with the characters of unemployment and inflation and their trend in the EMU. Then it underlines that EMU's institutions tend to reduce inflation to a minimum, while limiting fiscal interventions at the national and the European level. The policies implemented recently...

The fiscal consolidation efforts of Spain, Italy, and Portugal from 2010 to 2014 did not achieve their goal of reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio in any of the three countries. This Economic Bulletin examines why the spending cuts and tax increases, at times drastic, were unsuccessful and...