This paper investigates the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and its robustness for 28 countries of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) over the recent period. Our methodology relies on four recent estimation methods for non-stationary panel data and includes four pollutants...

The digitalization of transaction processes through tools such as electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) aims to improve tax compliance and reduce administrative costs. Another important aspect of digitalization is its potential to reduce tax evasion. We analyze the impact of the widely introduced...

With the establishment of the Single Market in 1993, the EU created the centerpiece of European Integration. The Economic and Monetary union (EMU) with the introduction of the Euro should complete the economic integration. The anniversary of 30 years of EU's SM offers the opportunity to evaluate...

In summer 1923, pursuant to the 'full powers' granted him by the Parliament to balance the budget, Alberto De Stefani - appointed in October 1922 as Mussolini's Treasury Minister - announced the abolition of inheritance tax. The most iconic act of Fascist 'financial restauration' of 1922-25, the...

In this report, we present the first evidence on how the cohorts of young people who entered the labour market during the pandemic have fared up to now. In Section 2, we discuss why we might expect the pandemic to lead to scarring effects, documenting how labour market outcomes evolved over the...

In the "Fit for 55" package of July 2021, the European Commission proposed inter alia a revision of the energy taxation directive with the intent of increasing tax rates for fossil fuels that should contribute to achieving the EU's emission reduction targets for 2030. Since then, climate policy...

The EU is revising its emissions trading system (ETS) and plans to impose a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) on imports. We evaluate the efficacy of the ETS retrospectively and its anti-competitive effects. We find that the ETS contributed to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the EU...

Economic literature suggests that banks change their dividend payouts for three main reasons. They may be willing to signal good future profitability to shareholders to address information asymmetry, or use dividends to mitigate the agency costs, or could come under pressure from prudential...

This paper compares within-sample and out-of-sample fit of a DSGE model with rational expectations to a model with adaptive learning. The Galí, Smets and Wouters model is the chosen laboratory using quarterly real-time euro area data vintages, covering 2001Q1-2019Q4. The adaptive learning model...

Differences in labour market institutions and regulations between countries of the monetary union can cause divergent responses even to a common shock. We augment a multi-country model of the euro area with search and matching framework that differs across Ricardian and hand-to-mouth households....

This paper investigates the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and its robustness for 28 countries of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) over the recent period. Our methodology relies on four recent estimation methods for non-stationary panel data and includes four pollutants...

While climate change has long called for a green shift in our economies, the current energy crisis leads to an increased urgency when it comes to transforming the energy and transportation systems. The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which was adopted to support recovery from the...

The European Green Deal, which aims to steer the EU towards climate neutrality, has traditionally been met with a degree of reluctance by the Visegrád countries. The convergence to green targets represents a particular challenge for these economies, given their fossil fuel-intensive industrial...

In this paper we augment the Bayesian unobserved components model of the EU Commission to estimate the cyclical component of total factor productivity (TFP gap) with a factor structure to include a wide array of business cycle indicators. We demonstrate that this model extension considerably...

The end of free movement and the introduction of the post-Brexit migration system represents a major structural change to the UK labour market. We provide a descriptive assessment of the impact on a sectoral basis. We examine how overall labour force growth has differed between sectors, both...

Does better access to foreign workers reduce firms' willingness to provide general skills training to unskilled workers? We analyze how the opening of the Swiss labor market to workers from the European Union affected the number of apprenticeship positions that firms provide. We exploit that the...

European countries experienced a large increase in labor supply due to the influx of Ukrainian refugees after the 2022 Russia invasion. We study its dynamic effects in a spatial model with forward-looking households of different skills, trade, and endogenous capital accumulation. We find that...

In Europe differences among countries in the overall change in happiness since the early 1980s have been due chiefly to the generosity of welfare state programs - increasing happiness going with increasing generosity and declining happiness with declining generosity. This is the principal...

In crisis times, insurance companies might feel the pressure to present a performance of their investment portfolios that is superior to the market, since investment portfolios back the claims of policyholders and serve as a signal for the claims' safety. I seek to show whether a stock market...

Heavy-duty vehicles (HDV) account for less than 2-5% of the vehicles on the road in Europe but contribute to 15-22% of CO2 emissions from road transport. Battery electric trucks (BETs) could be deployed on a large scale to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but they require charging infrastructure...

This report looks at employer - provided training in Europe. We start with a brief outline of the economic theory of training. We then look at the recent facts, by combining data from two employer surveys, the European Investment Bank's Investment Survey (EIBIS) and Eurostat's Continuous...

This study aims to reconsider the role of foreign direct investment determinants for European national development and to analyze the impacts of the pandemic situation caused by COVID-19. Foreign direct investment is a source of development; therefore, this study includes empirical applications,...