Although an extensive amount of literature reviews emerging patterns of east-west co-operation, it is not easy to grasp the state of the art. Too many of the books, articles and papers tend to mark the trees rather than to map the forest. The paper analyses recent trends from the point of view...

The paper investigates the relationship between offshoring, wages, and the ease with which individuals' tasks can be offshored. Our analysis relates to recent theoretical contributions arguing that there is only a loose relationship between the suitability of a task for offshoring and the...

Economic re-integration after a long period of separation among countries with different levels of development is expected to start in border regions. Enterprises along the borderline can gain a rent due to low transport and transaction costs. They benefit from the fortunate opportunity of...

We investigate whether firms' "global engagement", either in the form of exporting or opening up affiliates abroad, is related to the change in their management performance. We use new and unique data from a recent large scale firm survey of management practices in Germany. We calculate...

It is often argued that the process of globalization has mainly favoured large-scale multinational companies which are able to organize their business efficiently within internal hierarchies. However, globalization has not only pushed cross-border intra-finn transactions but also other...

A Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA) has been proposed in the mid-1990s to revitalize the economic and political ties between the United States and the European Union. This paper discusses the expected economic gains from such a free trade area for its members with respect to trade in goods...

Changes in exchange rates have become a prominent issue in Germany and Japan - due to the enormous appreciation of the Deutschmark and the Yen. Conventional wisdom suggests that economic activity will be negatively affected if a currency is going through a phase of appreciation. The paper...

While the EU is a customs union in merchandise trade (goods), it has not yet reached this stage of integration in service trade. How far the EU is from a customs union in service trade is very difficult to assess because of the nonquantitative nature of trade restrictions in this sector. The...

Using a large panel of UK manufacturing firms over the period 2000-2009, we consider how firms responded during the most recent financial crisis, estimating models for export market participation decisions and firm growth and survival. The results indicate that financial variables are highly...

We examine the differential effects of financial status and exporting activity on the likelihood of survival for firms in the UK and France - two countries with different financial systems. We aim to answer two main questions: What is the direct impact of financial characteristics and different...