We examine the impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on bilateral FDI stocks using extensive data from 1985 until 2011. We correct for endogeneity using indicators for governance and membership of international organisations. We find that ratified BITs increase on average bilateral...

One of the achievements of the of the European Union (EU) is the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour between the member states. The internal market for goods seems to function well, after the implementation of the Single Market programme in 1988. That is however not the case for...

Innovation seldom has purely domestic causes and consequences, but how can a European innovation policy complement or substitute national policies? Taking the subsidiarity principle as a starting point, this report discusses the economic rationale of a European innovation policy. Explorative...

This paper has two aims. First, it describes CPB's contribution on bilateral services trade data to version 7 of the GTAP database. Among others, it uses reliability indices to determine the quality of the data reported by exporting and importing countries. Second, this paper discusses briefly...

Innovation is a policy area in which the European Union (EU) has the competence to support, coordinate and supplement Member States policies according to the new Lisbon Treaty (2007). The Member States (MS) have the primacy in this area and the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality...

In services, the activities of foreign affiliates often exceed the value of cross-border trade. A complete analysis of services liberalisation therefore requires the modelling of FDI. This paper presents the treatment of FDI in our CGE model WorldScan based on the ideas of Petri (1997) and...

International trade in services is hampered by non-tariff barriers that originate from national regulations. Not only the level of regulation in home or export country matters, but also the inter-country differences in regulation for service markets. Regulatory measures tend to affect fixed...

International negotiations on the liberalisation of service trade are concentrated at non-tariff barriers (NTBs). National government measures form important obstacles for service providers when they want to access foreign markets. International studies predict substantial welfare benefits...

Using the CGE model WorldScan, we assess the benefits for the EU member states of jointly reaching four of the Lisbon targets (i.e. 70% employment, skills upgrades, increased R&D expenditures and administrative burden reductions of 25%), compared with the alternative when each country...

This note describes the sectoral total factor productivity (TFP) developments in the OECD between 1970-1990. Based on the ISDB data of the OECD, we confirm the stylised fact that TFP growth is relatively high in agriculture and relatively low in services. Within manufacturing, the TFP growth...