In October 2004, the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (ECFIN) held its first annual research conference. Its theme was "Business Cycles and Growth in Europe". The thirteen papers presented are collected here in revised form in two volumes as Economic Paper number 227, 1/2...

While current instruments of EU economic policy coordination helped stave off a fullscale depression, the post-2007 global financial and economic crisis has revealed a number of weaknesses in the Stability and Growth Pact, the EU framework for fiscal surveillance and fiscal policy coordination....

This paper explores the anatomy of the boom, deep depression and recovery in the Finnish and Swedish economies in the period 1985-2000. These fifteen years are divided into three phases: (1) financial liberalization and the boom and the overheating of 1985-90, (2) the outbreak and spread of the...

In the 1990s the world economy was hit by a series of unusually deep crises with far-reaching consequences, the first of which occurred in Finland and Sweden. This paper compares the cost of the crisis of the 1990s with the costs caused by all major crises and depressions since the 1870s in the...

This paper compares the boom-bust cycle in Finland and Sweden 1984-1995 with the average boom-bust pattern in industrialized countries as calculated from an international sample for the period 1970-2002. Two clear conclusions emerge. First, the Finnish-Swedish experience is much more volatile...

The causes and consequences of the financial crises in the Nordic countries in the early 1990s are examined and lessons from this episode are extracted. The focus is on the boom-bust episode in Finland, Norway and Sweden as these three economies went into a deep recession. The lessons from the...

This paper compares the boom-bust cycle in Finland and Sweden 1984-1995 with the average boom-bust pattern in industrialized countries as calculated from an international sample for the period 1970-2002. Two clear conclusions emerge. First, the Finnish-Swedish experience is much more volatile...