Globalization and European integration are substantially changing the interregional division of labor in Europe and the industrial specialization of European regions, thereby potentially affecting the extent of disparities between countries and regions. This paper reviews several theoretical...

Processes of regional economic integration have been shaping the economic relations between countries significantly during the last decades. In addition, an increasing integration of the national economies into the global economy has affected these economic relations, too. In an effort to...

This paper examines the transition process within Eastern Europe and the integration process with the EU and shows that the requirements for the transition towards a market economy overlap with the requirements for EU accession. Furthermore, the economic situation of the candidate countries is...

We examine the effect of exchange-rate misalignments on competition in the market for large commercial aircraft. This market is a duopoly where players compete in dollar-denominated prices while one of them, Airbus, incurs costs mostly in euros. We construct and calibrate a simulation model to...

This paper analyzes the impacts of news shocks on macroeconomic volatility. Whereas anticipation amplifies volatility in any purely forward-looking model, such as the baseline New Keynesian model, the results are ambiguous when including a backward-looking component. In addition to these...

The European Emissions Trading Scheme for CO2 established in 2005 is the world's largest emissions trading scheme. Since it covers only some sectors of the European economies it can nevertheless not ensure that the Kyoto targets are reached at minimal cost. This paper first analyzes the...

It is conventionally held that countries are worse off by forming a monetary union when it comes to macroeconomic stabilization. However, this conventional view relies on assuming that monetary policy is conducted optimally. Relaxing the assumption of optimal monetary policy not only uncovers...

The paper discusses similarities and differences between past EU binding internal liberalization "across the board" in the industrial sector and present so-called voluntary sectoral liberalization of member states of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). While both approaches are...

The aim of this paper is to estimate the trade gains arising from the constitution ofa currency union for a set of economically large, developed nations who create a monetary union as a deliberate economic policy action: namely, for the members of the euro area. With a 1980-2001 sample, no...

This paper estimates the costs of EU restraints on trade in textiles and clothing. After explaining the methods used, we examine the impact of an opening up of EU trade in textiles and clothing, inter alia to those economies where the textile and clothing (T&C) industries command sizeable shares...