The paper discusses the seriousness of current account imbalances in the last few decades in Europe, with a particular focus on the European Monetary Union. A closer look at the development of current accounts in European economies suggests the existence of some serious structural problems that...

International fragmentation of production and economic integration change the structure of international trade. Novel datasets reveal how production processes are unbundled across borders and connected internationally through Global Value Chains (GVCs). Yet, the impact of Economic Integration...

This paper focuses on the 2004 enlargement of the European Union to the East and treats it as a natural experiment to investigate two issues: first, whether there has been a trade creation effect in final and intermediate goods and second, to what extent this effect has been more pronounced for...

This paper deals with the question of what impact membership of the European Monetary Union (EMU) has had on small European states. We will also analyze whether or to what extent a large number of small member states affect the EMU itself when they vastly outnumber the large countries. We...

In order to identify convergence patterns among the group of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) we analyze clusters of traditional OECD countries, i.e. EU-15 plus Norway and Switzerland, Anglo-Saxon non-EU countries plus Japan, and CEECs based on macro data on government regulation...

Germany could have reached Kyoto protocol obligations earlier if German solar investments would be relocated to Sicily. Additional benefits of emission savings and energy production should rise up to 72%. Nevertheless German solar power plants 2008 counted for 20 % of the financial benefits...

This paper analyzes the effects of 3D printing technologies on the volume of trade and on the structure of FDI. A standard model with firm-specific heterogeneity generates three main predictions. First, 3D printers are introduced in areas with high economic activity that also face high transport...