This issue of the Bulletin reports research on labour-market rigidities and unemployment and conference and workshop proceedings on various aspects of EMU, the Japanese economy, the dynamics of unemployment, European competition policy, location and regional convergence, and the impacts of structural change on labour markets.

Recent research suggests that the belief that rigidities in labour markets are largely responsible for high European unemployment rates is misleadingly simplistic and leads to politically non-viable remedies

The costs of losing national control over monetary and exchange rate policy tools, and the consequences for the efficacy of monetary policy, were the broad themes of a joint conference with Banco de Portugal in Lisbon.

Whether a stability pact would help secure fiscal consolidation among EU members, or promote instability by imposing excessive adjustments on them, were among the questions addressed in a joint conference with the European Forum of the European University Institute in Florence.

The fourth conference of the Centre's European Network on the Japanese Economy, held jointly with STICERD and CEP at the LSE, sought to place a wide spectrum of Japanese economic issues in comparative perspective.

High unemployment formed the background to a Cambridge conference on the mechanisms underlying the dynamics of unemployment, including the reasons for, and the policy implications of, unemployment persistence.

At a workshop held in Florence, the design requirements of European competition policy, and progress in implementing existing policies, were examined.

The causes and consequences of urban agglomerations and of regional divergence and convergence, including cross-country effects, were discussed at a workshop held at CORE.

A joint workshop with the Tinbergen Institute in Amsterdam focused on the main approaches to research on inflows and outflows of people and jobs in the labour market and their relationships to structural change.