This book retraces the Communities' external liberalisation efforts, and discusses, where relevant, the repercussions of internal liberalisation on foreign competitors. The aim of this book is to clarify, and when feasible, to quantify the economic effects of the EU’s trade policies. To this...

The trade liberalisation agreements signed between the European Union and the southern Mediterranean countries carry risks as well as benefits. They reveal structural weaknesses in the partner countries, including continued rent seeking, market segmentation, a weak modern private sector and...

This publication looks at the importance of the EU sugar industry in the global sugar market. It analyses how sugar reforms adopted by the EU council in 2006 have led to market changes. The first part of this report looks at what might happen if complete policy reform and full trade...

This book demonstrates some of the pitfalls associated with services liberalisation but recommends perseverance and even acceleration of the reforms. Contributors call for orderly and rapid progress towards regional integration of the services sector, based on the gradual removal of the barriers...

Over the past few decades, economies and technologies have shifted in ways that have made people’s economic prospects more uncertain. This Policy Insights highlights the main findings from On Shaky Ground? Income Instability and Economic Insecurity in Europe, the inaugural report of the OECD...

Clusters of firms and related organizations in a range of industry specializations are a striking feature of the economic landscape in all countries. Their growth and survival depends on internal processes of specialization, cooperation and rivalry, and knowledge flows that underpin the...

The growth potential of countries increasingly depends on the effectiveness of their innovation systems in creating, diffusing and using knowledge. A large share of market-based or informal knowledge flows occur within industrial clusters that can be seen as reduced-form innovation systems....