There is a substantial heterogeneity in productivity when comparing individual firms. However, even when heterogeneity is found, some questions still remain unaddressed. For instance, when focusing on EU nothing is known about the importance of firms' heterogeneity compared with that of...

The chapter analyses practical issues regarding the economic specificity of US foreign direct investments (FDI) to selected EU countries. Therefore, four countries were selected -- the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium and Lithuania. There are plenty of tariff and non-tariff barriers to...

Central bank announcements have strong effects on interest rates, but small or even counterintuitive effects on economic expectations. Based on tick-by-tick futures prices on bonds and stock prices, I confirm these seemingly puzzling results for the euro area and provide evidence that they are...

The paper reviews adjustment dynamics in the EMU on the basis of estimated DSGE models for four large EA Member States (DE, FR, IT, ES). We compare the response of the four countries to identical shocks and find a particularly strong response of employment and wages in ES, a high sensitivity of...