China is well-placed to avoid the so-called “middle-income trap” and to continue to converge towards the more advanced economies, even though growth is likely to slow from near double-digit rates in the first decade of this millennium to around 7% at the 2020 horizon. However, in order to...

Recent evidence suggests that automation technologies entail a trade-off between productivity gains and employment losses for the economies that adopt them. This paper casts doubts on this trade-off in the context of a developing country. It shows significant productivity and employment gains...

Estonia and Finland have centuries of collaboration, mainly between the capital areas of Tallinn and Helsinki that currently account for 2 million inhabitants and USD 76 billion in economic output. The entry of Estonia into the European Union and, since the mid-2000s, a two-hour ferry trip, have...

Hedmark County (Norway) and Dalarna County (Sweden) are both rural, with the border being remote from regional centres. The total population of less than half a million inhabitants spans across almost 58 800 km², with an economic output of USD 22 billion. Efforts to support collaboration at the...

The Bothnian Arc is a cross-border area on the border of Finland and Sweden that covers the most populated areas along the upper Bothnian Bay, spanning 800 kilometres. It has a population of around 710 000, across 55 000 km² with an economic output of USD 31 billion. The Bothnian Arc...

The Top Technology Region/Eindhoven-Leuven-Aachen triangle (TTR-ELAt) is an initiative to support cross-border collaboration in a densely populated network of small and medium-sized cities located at the heart of western Europe with an annual economic output of USD 244 billion. The collaboration...

The Oresund is the most well-known example of European cross-border collaboration, building on the metropolitan area around Copenhagen and, across the sound, southern Sweden with the cities of Malmö, Lund and Helsingborg. Cross-border integration intensified following the opening of a...