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...

This paper discusses the evolution of competitiveness, industrial and trade specialization of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs). It is shown that the paths taken by the different CEECs have been quite diverse and we attempt to show that a combination of a catching-up plus trade...

This paper introduces a model for forecasting changes in employment levels and structures by sectors, occupational categories and educational attainment levels which is then applied to the new EU member states (NMS) and Bulgaria and Romania. The model is based on the following ideas As these...

In this paper we attempt to quantify the incidence of different types of technical barriers to trade (TBTs) on trade structures between seven Central and Eastern European countries (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Romania) and the European Union at the...

This study considers the overall implications of changes in employment patterns for the nature of the jobs in which people are employed and for job quality, in particular for the EU member states over the period 1995-2005. Jobs, defined as a particular occupation in a particular industry, are...

As the economic recession in the EU seems to be drawing to a close, there is inevitable interest in what the effects on employment in different sectors of activity and occupations have been, or are still likely to be once all the repercussions have materialized. Indeed, given the lags in both...

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...

This paper focuses on the increasing role played by lower- and medium-income countries in the global economy. In particular we look at the role of outsourcing in the process of trade integration of these countries. Further we discuss the impact of these integration patterns upon labour markets...