Taglioni, Daria, Winkler, Deborah, (2016)  “Making Global Value Chains Work for Development”, World Bank, June Economic, technological, and political shifts as well as changing business strategies have driven firms to unbundle production processes and disperse them across countries. Thanks to these changes, developing countries can now increase their participation in global value chains (GVCs) and thus become more competitive in agriculture, manufacturing and services. This is a paradigm shift from the …Read More

International Monetary Fund, (2016), “Government Finance Statistics Yearbook 2015”, IMF, June This annual publication provides detailed data on transactions in revenue, expense, net acquisition of assets and liabilities, other economic flows, and balances of assets and liabilities of general government and its subsectors. The data are compiled according to the framework of the 2014 Government Finance Statistics Manual, which provides for several summary measures of government fiscal performance.   Relevant …Read More

Bratsiotis, George, Cobham, David, (2016), “German macro: how it’s different and why that matters”, European Policy Centre, 29 Αpril Do the macroeconomics of the German political establishment really differ from standard western macroeconomics? That question was the starting point for the seminar on ‘German macro: How it’s Different and Why that Matters’, which was held at Heriot-Watt University in December 2015, with financial support from the Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE) …Read More

World Bank Group, (2016), “Global Economic Prospects, June 2016 : Divergences and Risks”, World Bank, June The World Bank is revising its 2016 global growth forecast down to 2.4 percent from the 2.9 percent pace projected in January. The move is due to sluggish growth in advanced economies, stubbornly low commodity prices, weak global trade, and diminishing capital flows. Commodity-exporting emerging market and developing economies have struggled to adapt to …Read More

Quaglia, Lucia, Royo, Sebastian, (2014), “Banks and the political economy of the sovereign debt crisis in Italy and Spain“, CES papers This paper sets out to explain why Spain experienced a full-fledged sovereign debt crisis and had to resort to euroarea financial assistance for its banks, whereas Italy did not. It undertakes a structured comparison, dissecting the sovereign debt crisis into a banking crisis and a balance of payments crisis. It …Read More

European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), “Benchmarking Working Europe 2016″, ETUI aisbl: Brussels, March 2016 With this year’s chosen focus – ‘prepared for the future?’ – the new edition of Benchmarking working Europe analyses the state of working Europe with the aid of a multi-level and multi-dimensional set of indicators. This 2016 edition is intended as one contribution to an assessment of what the EU current policies have achieved, or above all …Read More