Kozeniauskas, Nicholas, Veldkamp, Laura, (2017), “Unusual outcomes and uncertain times”, VoxEu, 3 January Uncertainty shocks are a major avenue of research in the quest to explain business cycles, as well as asset prices and financial crises. This column argues that three conceptually distinct types of uncertainty that are often modelled independently – ‘macro’ uncertainty about an aggregate variable such as GDP, ‘micro’ uncertainty about firms’ individual outcomes, and ‘higher-order’ uncertainty …Read More

Cheng, Gong, Diaz-Cassou, Javier, Erce, Aitor, (2016), “The Macroeconomic Effects of Official Debt Restructuring: Evidence from the Paris Club”, ESM Working Paper 21, 29 December This paper presents new empirical results on the macroeconomic impact of sovereign debt restructurings with official-sector creditors. Using a novel dataset on Paris Club restructurings and Local Projection methods, we find that Paris Club treatments can have a significant impact on economic growth — 2% …Read More

Carone, Giuseppe, Eckefeldt, Per, Giamboni, Luigi, Laine, Veli, Pamies Sumner, Stéphanie, (2016), “Pension Reforms in the EU since the Early 2000’s: Achievements and Challenges Ahead”, European Commission, 23 December Most EU Member States have carried out substantial pension reforms over the last decades in order to enhance fiscal sustainability, while maintaining adequate pension income. The intensity of pension reforms has been particularly strong since 2000. These reforms have been implemented …Read More

Belke, Ansgar, Osowski, Thomas, (2016), “Measuring fiscal spillovers in EMU and beyond: A Global VAR approach”, CEPS, 16 December This paper empirically identifies and measures fiscal spillovers in the EU countries using a global vector autoregression (GVAR) model. Our aim is to look at the sign and the absolute values of fiscal spillovers in a country-wise perspective and at the time profile (impulse response) of the impacts of fiscal shocks. …Read More

Égert, Balázs, Gal, Peter, (2016), “The quantification of structural reforms in OECD countries: a new framework”, OECD Economic Department Working Paper No. 1354, 20 December This document describes and discusses a new supply side framework that quantifies the impact of structural reforms on per capita income in OECD countries. It presents the overall macroeconomic impacts of reforms by aggregating over the effects on physical capital, employment and productivity through a production function. …Read More