Apart from exchange rate objectives which have resulted in reserve accumulation as a side effect, Asian countries have chosen explicitly to build up reserves for precautionary motives. This paper explores the issue of optimal precautionary demand for reserves by a central bank within a context...

The principal goal of integration in Europe in the post-Second World War period has always been the safeguarding of peace through economic integration. The European Union (EU) has overseen splendid economic achievements. A sign of that great success has been the EU’s continuous enlargement....

The aim of this study is to provide a succinct description of the specialisation model of four economies on the southern shores of the Mediterranean (Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia) and its recent evolution, concentrating in particular on the merchandise trade. The analysis shows, according...

A defining feature of globalization is the fragmentation of individual blocks of an integrated production process across countries. This necessitates flows of final goods as well as their parts and components back and forth among the involved nations. A depreciation of a country’s currency...

In this paper the extent of international fragmentation of production in Italian manufacturing industries for the years 1985, 1995 and 2000 is assessed with different indicators. The objective is to determine where fragmentation is most prevalent and to provide a description of the key...

Imports as an incentive to competition: <p> The international empirical evidence and the Single European Market case <p> This paper analyses the empirical literature which tests the hypothesis that imports may have a positive impact on competition. Most papers on industrialised countries, as well as...</p></p>

The need to reshape the institutional design at the basis of the Maastricht Treaty has been recently stressed. This paper considers some possible amendements to the Statute for the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European System of Central Banks (ECSB). The Statute shows a peculiar asymmetry...

A mixture of political and economic reasons in support of what eventually came to be known as European Union (EU) were also evident in its recent expansion. Under the politico-military umbrella of NATO , the principles of capitalism were strengthened in Europe, and by extension the interests of...

The interaction of the export ratio and the investment ratio, including foreign direct investment ratio, with income per capita was examined for all members in the EU using Granger-causality tests. Best results were obtained when the investigated variables were expressed in levels. These results...

The paper analyses the growth effects of a custom union. It starts by assuming an exogenous growth framework. In this context, it finds that joining a custom union leads to a higher level of capital stock and, in the transition period, to higher growth, if originally trade barriers were high....