For the period 2004-2010 many OECD countries have experienced a decline in industrial real value-added per capita with negative consequences for domestic economic development, and labour markets, not only in industry but also in services and other production sectors. Free competition policies...

One of the aims of the internationally funded Investment Compact of the Balkan Stability Pact is to reduce investment risk in the region and lay the foundations for the inflow of private capital. This paper discusses the situation of foreign direct investment (FDI) in South-East European...

Recent developments have revealed that (i) advanced transition countries have received most of the FDI to date, especially greenfield projects; (ii) more countries than in the mid?1990s are resorting to FDI in order to accelerate privatization (Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia); and (iii)...

This paper follows the definition of international competitiveness of countries (nations) as defined by Trabold (1995) including the ability to sell, the ability to attract FDI and the ability to adjust - all these leading to the ability to earn. These components can be measured by specific...

<em>Decreasing weight of manufacturing industry in Europe? Between terziarization and opening of the value chains</em> - This paper aims at understanding the decreasing weight of the manufacturing industry in the main European countries. The results obtained in this paper by using inputoutput tables seem...

We revisit the evidence about firms' performance and their international status in a large sample of Italian enterprises. Three results stand out. First, firms engaging in foreign production of final goods, in addition to export activities, are more productivethan firms that only export abroad....

The analysis of concentration patterns at both the national and the regional levels in the European Union (EU) initially reveals contradictory results of concentration and deconcentration trends. However, these industrial concentration trends in the two spatial dimensions are, in essence,...

Book review of Platzer, H.-W., Mueller, T. (2009): Die globalen und europaeischen Gewerkschaftsverbaende. Handbuch und Analysen zur transnationalen Gewerkschaftspolitik / Croucher, R., Cotton, E. (2009): Global Unions, Global Business / Erne, R. (2008): European Unions. Labor’s Quest for a...

Industrial production per head has usually increased in EU countries and regions for the period 2005-2007, but for the period 2007-2013 it has diminished in many countries and regions, with negative consequences for employment, wages and economic development. We analyze the important positive...

Taking global value chains (GVCs) into account has important implications for trade policy. When production is vertically fragmented and trade in intermediate inputs is prevalent, one has to look differently at a certain number of issues. Through case studies, this paper provides new evidence on...