In this paper we attempt to quantify the incidence of different types of technical barriers to trade (TBTs) on trade structures between seven Central and Eastern European countries (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Romania) and the European Union at the...

Summary Industrial policies in the EU have markedly shifted towards ‘horizontal’ measures and framework polices. The sustained de-industrialisation of several European economies and a general perception that countries with a strong manufacturing base emerged from the crisis in a strengthened...

This paper analyses the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry in the CEE candidate countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) with special emphasis on trade with the European Union during the second half of the...

This paper discusses the evolution of competitiveness, industrial and trade specialization of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs). It is shown that the paths taken by the different CEECs have been quite diverse and we attempt to show that a combination of a catching-up plus trade...

Although there exists a vast literature on convergence and divergence of income levels across countries or regions at the aggregate level, there is only little work on convergence and / or divergence processes of productivity and wage levels at the more disaggregated industrial level. These are...

This study looks at the relationship between trade integration and labour markets for a group of OECD economies (USA, Japan, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom). We examine particularly trade relationships between these OECD economies and different groups of 'Southern'...

The impact of the Central and Eastern European economies' trade integration with European markets on CEE trade structures has been studied extensively. These studies frequently observe a quality upgrading of CEE exports. In this paper we consider three dimensions of quality upgrading upgrading...

The paper analyses the effects of international fragmentation in terms of intermediate goods trade on the dynamics of skill-specific real wage bills in manufacturing of three Central and East European countries (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic). Both intermediate goods exports and imports of...

Casual evidence suggests that emerging and developing countries are often gaining market shares in world exports in technology-intensive sectors in the course of development. On the other hand textbook trade theory would suggest that these countries specialize in lower-tech industries. The...

This study has been prepared for the European Commission (Framework Contract B2/Entr/05/091) and is composed of five sections. The first three sections all deal with assessing the role of skills in the European economy Section 1 undertakes a number of econometric exercises to analyse the...