The eurozone’s labour market is growing tighter largely because of changes in France and Germany, a paper published in the European Central Bank’s latest economic review argues.

By contrast, the two researchers find, labour markets in Spain and Italy appear to be much less tight than their highest levels before the financial crisis – limiting the spread of wage inflation.

In their paper, Agostino Consolo and António Dias da Silva use the concept of the “Beveridge curve”, named after the 20th