This study has been prepared for the European Commission (Framework Contract B2/Entr/05/091) and is composed of five sections. The first three sections all deal with assessing the role of skills in the European economy Section 1 undertakes a number of econometric exercises to analyse the...

The recent economic downturn The decline in GDP during the recession has been concentrated in manufacturing and construction and triggered significant (though smaller) declines in basic services (distribution, hotels and restaurants, and transport). The decline in manufacturing production was...

Summary Inequality is a multidimensional phenomenon though it is often discussed along a single dimension such as income. This is also the case for the various decomposition approaches of inequality indices by recipients or income sources. In this paper we study one- and multidimensional indices...

The external conditions facing the transition economies slightly improved on balance during the year 2004. The eight new EU member states of Central and Eastern Europe (NMS-8) recorded higher GDP growth (5% on average) than in the previous year, largely thanks to expanding domestic demand - in...

The paper analyses economic inequality in Croatia in comparison with other transition economies of Central, East and Southeast Europe. It comprises a literature review and a descriptive analysis as well as an econometric modelling exercise. The main findings are the following Over the entire...

This study provides an overview of economic and labour market developments in the new EU member states of Central and Eastern Europe over the past several years. In addition, it presents the experiences that have been collected with regard to migration flows between the 'old' and the 'new'...

Summary German (PDF) Summary French (PDF) The objective of this study is to analyse employment developments in the gas and electricity sectors in seven Western Balkan Contracting Parties of the Energy Community. These are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of...

Summary This study analyses the impact of knowledge assets on productivity and technical efficiency in the EU, as well as their role in the process of knowledge transfer. The analysis covers the role of the institutional and regulatory environment in affecting productivity and technical...

For about a decade, GDP growth in Central European countries has been consistently faster than in the 'old' EU-15. As a first approximation, one can expect a growth differential of about 2 percentage points to prevail also in the future. This practical rule-of-thumb is broadly consistent with...

This paper analyses the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry in the CEE candidate countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) with special emphasis on trade with the European Union during the second half of the...