Drawing on the OECD’s expertise in comparing country experiences and identifying best practices, this book tailors the OECD’s policy advice to the specific and timely priorities of Germany and the Euro Area, focusing on how their governments can make reform happen.
The 32nd issue of the International Productivity Monitor is a special issue produced in collaboration with the OECD. All articles published in this issue were selected from papers presented at the First Annual Conference of the OECD Global Forum on Productivity held in Lisbon, Portugal, July ...
The global economic and financial crisis that started in 2007 exposed serious flaws in the euro's original design. This report examines why Europe's economic and monetary union was so badly affected by the crisis, and assesses whether further changes need to be made to the structure of economic governance that underpins it. A Chatham House, Elcano and AREL Report
As a long-run competitor and collaborator with the dollar, the euro creates the potential for a bipolar international monetary system, offering unprecedented challenges and opportunities to economic policymakers. This book explores the euro's international role, its record till its fifth year, and its future.
Launched in March 2010 by the European Commission, the Europe 2020 strategy aims to achieve "smart, sustainable, and inclusive" growth. The engines for this growth are - Knowledge and innovation - Greener and more efficient use of resources - Higher employment combined with social and territorial cohesion This CEPS report takes an in-depth look at this major initiative and finds that the strategy itself needs to be revised in several important respects. First, the authors believe, R&D spending per se is not the best indicator of innovativeness; a new measure, intangible capital, would be more appropriate. Second, while increasing the share of the workforce with a university degree is important for competitiveness and employment, it is the quality of that education that matters more than the quantity. The study also finds that employment targets would be better reached by a skills upgrade among women who have the least education. Concerning climate change, the authors conclude that unless the EU increases the level of its ambition and adds a carbon import tariff, reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions are likely to have a negligible impact on global climate change. Finally and more generally, the report argues that the 2020 strategy should acknowledge the importance of institutional efficiency at the national level.
We examine economic convergence among euro area countries on multiple dimensions. While there was nominal convergence of inflation and interest rates, real convergence of per capita income levels has not occurred among the original euro area members since the advent of the common currency. Income convergence stagnated in the early years of the common currency and has reversed in the wake of the global economic crisis. New euro area members, in contrast, have seen real income convergence. Business cycles became more synchronized, but the amplitude of those cycles diverged. Financial cycles showed a similar pattern: sychronizing more over time, but with divergent amplitudes. Income convergence requires reforms boosting productivity growth in lagging countries, while cyclical and financial convergence can be enhanced by measures to improve national and euro area fiscal policies, together with steps to deepen the single market.
The Theory of Industrial Organization is the first primary text to treat the new industrial organization at the advanced-undergraduate and graduate level. Rigorously analytical and filled with exercises coded to indicate level of difficulty, it provides a unified and modern treatment of the field with accessible models that are simplified to highlight robust economic ideas while working at an intuitive level. To aid students at different levels, each chapter is divided into a main text and supplementary section containing more advanced material. Each chapter opens with elementary models and builds on this base to incorporate current research in a coherent synthesis. Tirole begins with a background discussion of the theory of the firm. In Part I he develops the modern theory of monopoly, addressing single product and multi product pricing, static and intertemporal price discrimination, quality choice, reputation, and vertical restraints. In Part II, Tirole takes up strategic interaction between firms, starting with a novel treatment of the Bertrand-Cournot interdependent pricing problem. He studies how capacity constraints, repeated interaction, product positioning, advertising, and asymmetric information affect competition or tacit collusion. He then develops topics having to do with long term competition, including barriers to entry, contestability, exit, and research and development. He concludes with a "game theory user's manual" and a section of review exercises. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images found in the physical edition.