Abstract In the aftermath of the Great Recession, governments have implemented several policy measures to counteract the collapse of the financial sector and the downswing of the real economy. Within a framework of Minsky-Veblen cycles, where relative consumption concerns, a debt-led growth...

This paper analyses economic developments in the eurozone since its inception in 1999. In doing so, we document a process of economic divergence and polarisation among those countries that joined the eurozone during its first two years, which fits a typical 'core – periphery' pattern. We show...

Assessing Path Dependency in European Economic Integration This paper analyses the dynamics of structural polarisation and macroeconomic convergence vs. divergence in the context of European integration, where the latter is understood primarily as an increase in economic and financial openness....

A Review of Existing Measures and Empirical Practices This paper surveys existing measures of economic openness understood as the degree to which non-domestic actors can or do participate in a domestic economy. We introduce a typology of openness indicators which distinguishes between 'real' and...