This work examines the political economy of exchange-rate policies in the eastward expansion of the eurozone. Analysis shows that prospective members of the EMU are likely to pass on some costs of convergence to the current EMU members. The mechanism is an altered exchange-rate policy that...

Based on the assumption that the economic integration process contributes, via market reforms, to the dynamics of the space distribution in candidate countries, this study examines (i) whether agglomeration forces or dispersion forces are dominant; (ii) whether EU-integration causes a structural...

This paper analyzes the membership of the Visegrad Group countries (the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary) in the European Union (EU). It presents the parallel process of fundamental systemic transformation and integration with the EU in the analyzed countries. Their integration path...

This book's thirteen contributions bring together the results of recent research on determinants of regional specialization, growth, and convergence in the context of European integration. They offer fresh theoretical and empirical evidence on patterns of regional production structures,...

Overview -- Overview -- Trade and Foreign Direct Investment in an Enlarged EU: Opportunities and Challenges -- Evolving Pattern of Intra-industry Trade Specialization of the New Member States of the EU: The Case of the Automotive Industry -- FDI Spillovers in the Czech Republic: Takeovers Versus...

This book analyses the process of regionalisation and plots its future development. Regionalisation is a common feature of the changing territorial organisation of European states today. Regionalisation alone, however, cannot produce any of the benefits attributed to it without looking into the...

The enlargement of the European Union towards the East from May 2004 has generated an increase of about 100 million inhabitants in the EU population, and has especially brought along major challenges and important opportunities both for the 'new' countries and for the 'old' member states. That...

Christoph Michael Hindermann uses a statistical approach to analyze the impact of economic freedom on state legitimacy. Based on multiple regression models, the author not only extracts the determinants of legitimacy but also shows that rule of law is the most important area of economic freedom...

This book addresses the recent debate about copyright law and its impact on the distribution of scientific knowledge from an economic perspective. The focus is on the question whether a copyright regime or an open access regime is better suited to the norms and organizational structure in a...