This paper presents new estimates of the economic benefits from economic and political integration. Using the synthetic counterfactuals method, we estimate how GDP per capita and labour productivity would have behaved for the countries that joined the European Union (EU) in the 1973, 1980s, 1995...

This paper contributes to the literature on the differences in the transmission processes within Euroland. We start from the proposition that there are 'deep' differences in the nature of social conflicts and in the way countries deal with these conflicts. We empirically test this effect for the...

This paper integrates in a unified and tractable framework some of the key insights of the field of international trade and economic growth. It examines a sequence of theoretical models that share a common description of technology and preferences but differ on their assumptions about trade...

This paper deals with the effects of European integration in the EC and EFTA on economic growth. Base regressions suggest that EC and EFTA memberships do in fact have a positive and significant effect on economic growth, and that there is no significant difference between EC and EFTA membership....

This paper examines whether the different macroeconomic performances of the German economy in two post-war decades provide evidence for the theory (first advanced by Mancur Olson) that sharp institutional breaks are conducive to economic growth because they destroy the existing network of...

Between 2000 and 2012, the Portuguese economy grew less than the United States during the Great Depression and less than Japan during its lost decade. This paper asks why this happened, with a particular focus on the slump between 2000 and 2007. It describes the main facts of Portugal's recent...

We consider a linguistically diversified society that has to select a set of official languages. We examine the notion of language disenfranchisement that is created when one or more languages fail to be included in the list of the official ones, implying that some individuals are denied full...

The European Union has recently expanded from 15 to 25 countries. In line with this enlargement, the list of official EU languages has grown from 11 to 20. Currently, the EU extends equal treatment to all member countries’ official languages by providing translations for documents and...

The EU-US total factor productivity (TFP) growth gap since the mid-1990's is concentrated in a handful of market service industries (most notably retail trade) and in ICT-producing manufacturing, whilst the EU exhibits a stronger performance in a number of the network utilities. This paper...

Extensive multilingualism is one of the most important and fundamental principles of the European Union. However, a large number of official languages (currently 23) hinders communication and imposes substantial financial and legal costs. We address the merits of multilingualism and formulate an...