The success of the integration process of the new EU Member States is reflected by the convergence performance. Sustainable convergence assumes that potential growth rates of the less developed countries continuously exceed the dynamics of the potential output of the developed countries....

We analyse the effect of Slovakia’s euro adoption in 2009 on the country’s economic performance by using the synthetic control method. This method compares Slovakia’s economic performance with that of a weighted combination of comparable Central European economies that have remained...

We analyze recent contributions to growth theory based on the model of expanding variety of Romer [Romer, P. (1990). “Endogenous technological change”. Journal of Political Economy 98, 71–102]. In the first part, we present different versions of the benchmark linear model with imperfect...

En los últimos cuarenta años, la tasa media anual de crecimiento del PIB per cápita de Cataluña se ha situado en torno al 2%, resultado de un patrón de crecimiento económico que se ha desarrollado de acuerdo a dos modelos claramente diferenciados. El primero de ellos se extiende de 1970 a...

This paper deals with the existence and identification of a common European Growth Cycle. It has recently been argued that the formation of a monetary union creates in itself a tendency for business cycle symmetry to emerge. If this holds for the European monetary Union and the quasi-union of...

Using a panel dataset covering 139 countries over the 1970–2009 period, we empirically investigate the role of foreign direct investment on growth through diffusion of technology and innovation. Using an otherwise standard growth regression and regressions on productivity growth, we introduce...

After nearly fifteen years of transition, the countries of Central Europe have entered the European Union on 1 May 2004. For the four countries that are members of the OECD (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovak Republic), accession follows multiyear efforts of economic stabilisation and...

In this paper we conduct a meta-analysis to examine the link between R&D spending and economic growth in the EU and other regions. The results suggest that the growth-enhancing effect of R&D in the EU15 countries does not differ from that in other countries in general, but it is less significant...

This paper explores the role of managerial capital and business research and development (R&D) in fostering multifactor productivity (MFP) convergence in a panel of 42 countries. The OECD long-term growth model is augmented to show that, in addition to trade openness, an economy’s speed of...

This paper investigates the effect of product market regulations on the international diffusion of productivity shocks. The empirical results indicate that restrictive product market regulations slow the process of adjustment through which best practice production techniques diffuse across...