It is widely agreed that the natural unemployment rate recovered strongly in several OECD economies in the 1990s while not yet in the others. This paper draws on models by the authors endogenizing the path of the natural rate in order to trace the causes and apportion the credit. The results...

The continuous appreciation of the Euro since the Fall of 2000 and the uncertainty surrounding its future course are obscuring the prospect for growth in Europe. When one looks in retrospect to the evolution of the euro (reconstituted from 1979), an important fact shows up: since the beginning...

Les constats et hypothèses d’évolution du modèle français ont montré que son avenir était fortement conditionné par l’avenir de l’Europe.

Les années de préparation et d’installation de l’euro ont été des années de croissance faible ou médiocre dans les grands pays de la zone. Cette performance décevante est, souvent, attribuée aux défaillances des marchés de biens et du travail et, par suite, à l’insuffisante...

The long wave of globalization will most probably lose part of its strength in the next few years. As a consequence inflation will not remain as low as it has been for the past three decades, where the growth strategy of emerging countries, especially China, has mainly relied on exports to the...

This year the G's are meeting at a critical moment in history, at least economic and social history. They will confront the gravest economic and social crisis in almost 80 years. To paraphrase Keynes, the destiny of the world is in the hands of the members of the G's. They could act in such a...

Both the action and the communication strategy of the ECB rely on the assumption, explicitly stated, that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon, and that the interest rate instrument should be devoted exclusively to dealing with inflation pressures. According to this prior, the ECB...

In this paper, we explore three scenarios for the future of the European Union, using history and reasoned imagination as guides. Our three scenarios are rooted in European contemporary challenges but draw on three ages that have shaped what Europe has become. Scenario 1 harks back to Antiquity...

This paper should be read as complementary to my last briefing paper (N3, September 2001) The European policy mix At its meeting on 8 November, the Governing Council of the ECB decided to reduce the minimum bid rate on the main refinancing operations of the Eurosystem by 50 basis points to...

This draft of our contribution to “The politics and economics of change in European social models” book project, is focused on the relation between macroeconomic policies and social models in the EU 15 during the last two decades. It first describes the shift towards the Maastricht...