This chapter aims at analysing some characteristics of the innovation process, focusing on two factors that may determine the innovative capacity of a country: social capital and culture. The main objective is to explain that social capital can have positive effects on the equality level of an...

This paper aims at analysing the performances of the EU member states in the Europe 2020 Strategy and understanding the main factors of success. It builds on the Europe 2020 Index developed in Pasimeni (2011) to quantify and measure progress achieved by the 27 countries in pursuing the...

This paper presents an ex-post assessment of the current situation of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in light of the conditions prescribed by the theory of Optimum Currency Areas (OCA). The analysis shows that those conditions were satisfied at very different degrees. Factors mobility has...