The Group of Twenty (G20) was created to deal with international economic and financial challenges that require coordination that extends beyond the group of developed countries. After the 2007-2009 crisis, the G20 became the leading forum for multilateral economic and financial cooperation. The G20 initiated coordinated fiscal and monetary stimulus plans on a very large scale. It also decided to... Lire la suite
France has achieved four of the six objectives in the European Union's strategic framework for Education and Training 2020 (ET2020), namely: reducing the school dropout rate to below 10%, ensuring that over 40% of persons aged 30-34 have a tertiary degree, enrolling over 95% of children aged 4 to 6 in early childhood education, and providing lifelong learning for over 15% of adults.However, in eac... Lire la suite
The euro is an economic and political project like no other. Today, 340 million people across 19 Member States use on a daily basis a stable and credible currency. The euro is the second most commonly held reserve currency, accounting for one-quarter of all holdings worldwide. The economic and financial crisis triggered a raft of reforms that sought to make the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) mo... Lire la suite
The analysis of the distributable surplus examines how the benefits of growth are shared. The distributable surplus is the share of GDP growth available for improving the real remuneration of the factors of production. It is therefore the share of growth not used to remunerate the increase in the volume of factors of production. The surplus is composed of productivity gains and the change in the a... Lire la suite
Unemployment insurance is not necessarily the only protection against involuntary loss of employment. Indeed, in many European countries, unemployment benefits are only part of the replacement income for the jobseekers. These benefits may be supplemented with other social transfers, such as housing benefits and family allowance, and/or specific tax reductions.Cross-country comparisons of public fi... Lire la suite
While traditional economic approaches in international climate agreements differ in some respects, they are all based on three main principles:- Universality: Because the causes and consequences of climate change are global, all countries must participate in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with no free riders.- Efficiency: To achieve the greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction objective at leas... Lire la suite
(Update on June 15, 2017)Back in 1989, the Brady Plan enabled developing countries to extricate themselves from a solvency crisis that had severely hampered their growth throughout the 1980s. Under the Plan bank loans to these countries were exchanged for bonds with lower face values and longer maturities. The success of the Plan marked a turning point for middle-income countries (MICs). They star... Lire la suite
The significant economic growth and the profound structural changes that occurred since the end of the 19th century have proceeded hand-in-hand with an unprecedented rise in temperatures as well as broader changes to global climate. At COP21 in Paris, the common realization that continuous global warming could lead to irreversible damage to the planet led the international community to confirm and... Lire la suite
Japan’s fall into deflation is explained by two sets of factors. The first were structural, such as the fading of the positive effects of technological catch-up and population ageing. The second were more cyclical like the economic downturns following the burst of the real-estate and stock-market bubble and the end-1997 economic crisis of the Asian countries. Since then, Japan has never experience... Lire la suite
The tendency towards international expansion of the value chain over the past three decades has gradually spread to research and development (R&D) activities, formerly located close to decision making centres. The trend appears to be stabilizing in most European countries, though it is impossible to say whether this slowdown is cyclical or structural. One channel for internationalisation is foreig... Lire la suite