Demary, Markus, Hornik, Joanna, Watfe,Gibran, (2016), “SME Financing in the EU: Moving beyond one-size-fits-all”, Bruges European Economic Policy Briefings 40 / 2016, The proposal for a European Capital Markets Union (CMU) carries large potential economic benefits from enhancing the financing possibilities for Small and MediumSized Enterprises (SMEs). By deepening the capital markets and strengthening crossborder integration, the European Commission hopes to stimulate economic growth and boost employment. In this paper, we …Read More

Beetsma, Roel M.W.J., Debrun, Xavier, (2016), “Fiscal Councils: Rationale and Effectiveness”, IMF WP/16/86, April The paper discusses the effectiveness of independent fiscal institutions—or fiscal councils—in taming the deficit bias that emerged in the 1970s. After a review of the main theoretical arguments and recent trends about fiscal councils, we develop a stylized model showing how a fiscal council can effectively mitigate the deficit bias even though it has no direct lever on the …Read More

Haffert, Lukas, (2016), “Permanent Budget Surpluses as a Fiscal Regime“, MPIfG Discussion Paper 16/1, February This paper challenges the focus on budget deficits that permeates the literature on fiscal policy. It analyzes countries running budget surpluses and asks why some of them preserved these surpluses while others did not. Whereas several OECD members recorded surpluses for just a few years, balanced budgets became the norm in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, and …Read More

Christiansen, Lone Engbo, Lin, Huidan, Pereira, Joana, Topalova, Petia, Turk,  Rima, (2016), “Gender Diversity in Senior Positions and Firm Performance : Evidence from Europe “, IMF Working Papers:2016/50Series, March This paper examines the link between gender diversity in senior corporate positions and financial performance of 2 million companies in Europe. We document a positive association between corporate return on assets and the share of women in senior positions and establish …Read More

Kotia, Ananya ,Duarte Lledo, Victor, (2016), “Do Subnational Fiscal Rules Foster Fiscal Discipline? New Empirical Evidence from Europe”, IMF WP/16/84, April This paper studies how fiscal rules interact with the intergovernmental fiscal framework to foster fiscal discipline among European subnational governments. We use political variables describing the fiscal attitudes of the central government as instruments to obtain consistent estimates of the impact of subnational fiscal rules on fiscal balances. The results suggest that …Read More

Fratzscher, Marcel, Gropp, Reint , Kotz, Hans-Helmut, Krahnen, Jan , Odendahl, Christian, Weder Di Mauro, Beatrice,  Wolff, Guntram B., (2016), “Mere criticism of the ECB is no solution”, Bruegel, 10 April The eurozone remains in a deep, largely macro-economic crisis. A robust global economy and falling oil prices have supported Europe’s economy for some time, but by now it is clear that the eurozone will only be able to pull itself …Read More