Low international competitiveness of a set of euro area countries, which have become evident by large current account deficits and rising risk premiums on government bonds, is one of the most challenging economic policy issues for Europe. We analyse the role of private restructuring and public...

In explaining the uneven spatial distribution of economic activity, urban economics and new economic geography (NEG) dominate recent research in economics. A main difference between these two approaches is that NEG stresses the role of spatial linkages whereas urban economics does not do so. We...

Distance related variables typically vary in a cross-section dimension but less so in a time dimension across cities, regions, or countries. The enlargement of the EU or the introduction of the euro, however, can be looked upon as integration shocks that are informative of the consequences of...

This paper studies the experiences with fiscal adjustments in the EuropeanUnion (EU) countries during the transition period to the Economic andMonetary Union (EMU). Using several approaches suggested in the literatureon fiscal adjustments and their macroeconomic effects and in the literatureon...

We argue that, under certain conditions, firms consider exports as a substitute for domestic demand. Our econometric model for six euro area countries suggests domestic demand and capacity constraints as additional variables for export equations. We apply the exponential and logistic variant of...

Using a rich data set on the EU regions, we analyze the relevance of two possible determinants of a region's resilience to shocks, the degree of urbanization and specialization. We take the Great Recession, the economic and financial crisis that started in 2008, as our shock and then analyze how...

This paper studies the design, effects and interactions of monetary and fiscal policies in the euro-area and between the euro-area and the non euro-area. To do so, a stylized three-country model of monetary and fiscal policy rules is constructed. It is analyzed how monetary and fiscal rules...

Based on a new economic geography (NEG) model by Puga (1999), we use the equilibrium wage equation to estimate two key structural model parameters for the NUTS II EU regions. These estimations enable us to come up with an empirically grounded free-ness of trade parameter. In line with NEG...

This paper empirically investigates the differences in the motives of raising privatisation proceeds for a panel of EU countries from 1990 to 2000. More specifically, we test whether privatisations can be mainly interpreted (a) as ingredients of a larger reform package of economic liberalisation...