We analyse the effects of financial shocks on economic development in the euro area and the Netherlands in particular. We develop VAR models that take account of feedback loops between financial-market conditions and the real economy. These feedback loops operate via the aggregated euro-area...

Exchange rate risk will only have a small effect on international transactions as long as this risk is easily tradable. We find evidence indicating that the availability of currency futures can explain the relatively small impact of exchange rate volatility on trade. The impact of exchange rate...

Structural funds are the most intensively used policy instrument by the European Union to promote economic growth in its member states and to speed up the process of convergence. This paper empirically explores the effectiveness of European Structural Funds by means of a panel data analysis for...

WorldScan is a recursively dynamic general equilibrium model for the world economy, developed for the analysis of long-term issues in international economics. The model is used both as a tool to construct long-term scenarios and as an instrument for policy impact assessments, e.g. in the fields...

Enlargement of the EU with ten Central and Eastern European Countries is a major item on the EU's policy agenda. Assessing the economic consequences of the accession to the internal market is not obvious. This paper provides a new method to quantify the impact of the accession. The assessment...

The last four decades, Dutch exports and imports grew annually about 7.5%, while re-exports rocketed in the last two decades. Using a gravity approach this paper finds that the increase in trade is largely caused by income developments. Trade policy, consisting of reductions in import tariffs...

In GRAVITY WITH GRAVITAS: A SOLUTION TO THE BORDER PUZZLE, Anderson and Van Wincoop (2003) estimate what trade between US states and Canadian provinces would have been if the border between Canada and the United States had not existed. They showed that computing the border effect requires...

We explore the economic implications of the possible accession of Croatia to the European Union. We focus on two main changes associated with the EU-membership: accession to the internal European Market and institutional reforms in Croatia triggered by the EU-membership. Consumption per capita...

This paper explains bilateral services trade using a gravity equation and compares the results with trade in goods. We analyse bilateral trade between the provinces of Canada and between the member states of the European Union. We conclude that the gravity equation explains the variability in...

The dynamic effects from EU membership are crucial for the new member states to catch up with the average income level in the old member states. To gauge the dynamic effects, we follow a two-step procedure in which a gravity equation for bilateral trade shows the trade effect of EU membership...