Documents Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels 73 results

"The findings of this comprehensive study undertaken by CEPS for the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities are intended to contribute to the identification of reforms and policy measures that are potentially the most significant for Europe to ensure growth and jobs in the medium term.

The assessment of employment prospects during the period up to 2020 will now have to take account of the effects on the labour force of the 2008/2009 downturn. Consequently, employment policy will, over the medium term, face the particularly difficult challenge of reconciling the longer-term objectives with immediate concerns about the exit from and the aftermath of the crisis. Member States will also have to encourage the development of new activities associated with adaptation to climate change, while expanding services and products for older citizens."

"The recent economic and financial crises have shown the weakness of EU economic governance. A process of strengthening macroeconomic and fiscal surveillance started in the course of 2010; among other proposals, the European Commission suggested a new binding criterion of debt reduction: debt-to-GDP ratio is to be considered sufficiently diminishing if its distance with respect to the 60% of GDP reference value has reduced over the previous three years at a rate of the order of one-twentieth per year.

In this Working Document, ISTAT Researchers Marco Fioramanti and Claudio Vicarelli try to evaluate, with the support of the Oxford Economic Global Model, the economic consequences of the simultaneous attempt of all euro area countries to fulfil this one-twentieth criterion in the 2011-2015 period. Simulation results show that the mechanical application of the debt rule proposed by the European Commission would be only marginally efficient in reducing the debt to GDP ratio at best, but with high costs represented by the loss of flexibility, and counterproductive at worst."

"The findings of this comprehensive study undertaken by CEPS for the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities are intended to contribute to the identification of reforms and policy measures that are potentially the most significant for Europe to ensure growth and jobs in the medium term.

The assessment of employment prospects during the period up to 2020 will now have to take account of the effects on the labour force of the 2008/2009 downturn. Consequently, employment policy will, over the medium term, face the particularly difficult challenge of reconciling the longer-term objectives with immediate concerns about the exit from and the aftermath of the crisis. Member States will also have to encourage the development of new activities associated with adaptation to climate change, while expanding services and products for older citizens."

"The financial crisis has differently affected trust in national and European governmental institutions. Our paper analyses the determinants of trust in national and European institutions over the last decade – with particular focus on the 2007-09 period – and comes to the conclusion that citizens' declining trust in national governments is related to an increase in unemployment in the EU-15 and EU-25. In the EU-25, falling trust levels in national parliaments are also associated with an increase in government debts. Trust in the European Commission and European Parliament seems strongly associated with the situation in the real economy (growth of GDP per capita). Furthermore, our analysis confirms that trust in national institutions has actually increased in the direct aftermath of the financial crisis."

"This paper analyses whether the financial crisis has affected citizens' confidence in the free market economy and whether it has triggered citizens' demand for a free market economy with stronger state regulations. Using panel data, the paper confirms that citizens' confidence levels in the free market economy have decreased in most of the largest economies and demand for a free market economy with stronger state regulation has increased on both sides of the Atlantic. After analysing the determinants for citizens' confidence in the free market economy and demand for a free market economy with stronger state regulation before and after the financial crisis, the author concludes that citizens' net confidence loss in the free market economy seems to have been driven by rising unemployment rates, and citizens' demand for stronger state regulation seems to have been driven by the real economic downturn in GDP growth."

"Using new international comparable data on intangible capital investment by business within a panel analysis from 1995-2005 in an EU-15 country sample, this paper finds a positive and significant relationship between intangible capital investment by business and labour productivity growth. This relationship is cross-sectional in nature and proves to be robust to a range of alterations. Our empirical analysis confirms previous findings that the inclusion of business intangible capital investment into the asset boundary of the national accounting framework increases the rate of change of output per worker more rapidly. In addition, intangible capital is able to explain a significant portion of the unexplained international variance in labour productivity growth and when incorporating business intangibles, capital deepening becomes an even more significant source of growth. The relationship is slightly stronger in the time period 1995-2000 and seems to be driven by the coordinated countries within the EU-15."

"Job quality is a multidimensional concept, but the empirical analysis of job quality in Europe leads to three main types of result. First, it reveals important differences across countries, with four main regimes prevalent in Europe. Second, it supports the hypothesis that a higher level of job quality is associated with better labour market and economic performance. Finally, it emphasises the heterogeneity of quality across social groups, especially according to gender, age, and education."