The three essays of this dissertation contribute to the measurement of European economic integration and investigate the welfare effects of the European countries. The first study presents a newly developed index – the EU Index – which measures the extent of economic integration into the...

This paper tests the question whether the integration process in the EU has contributed to the often-observed growing dispersion of income over the regions of the EU, in the presence of convergence between the member states. We do this by introducing price convergence as an indicator of...

The study is based on the critical observations that competitive market forces alone are not able to assure convergence with the developed countries. These observations are grounded on the results of the computation of the marginal rate of return to capital (which contradict the neoclassical...

We discuss past performance and future challenges for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We highlight the successful convergence process of those countries, not least thanks to their integration into European and global value chains. As the external environment changes, so...

We show that in a fully integrated economy, in which there is free mobility of goods and factors, each member’s share of total output will equal its shares of total stocks of productive factors (i.e., physical and human capital). We label this result the equal-share relationship. This...

This paper investigates how the European integration process of central eastern European countries, which has been taking place since the 1990's, affects their GDP growth. Based on an augmented Solow model, I estimate a convergence equation for a panel of ten countries over 16 years (1995-2010)....