Following the conclusion of the TRIPS Agreement, much has been written on the potential costs and benefits of stronger Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) protection in terms of its impact on innovation and technology transfer, as well as economic growth and welfare. This paper documents the...

In this paper we extend the agglomeration model of Ciccone (2002) to the level of industry. We then test this model using panel data for six sectors on regional level data for 27 EU member states. Our results for the aggregate economy confirm the estimates of Ciccone (2002). For our full sample...

This paper employs smooth transition models to investigate the GDP series of ten CEECs. Allowing for a transition in both trend and intercept we examine the response of GDP to reforms in CEECs. Our results indicate that in only a small of number of countries is there evidence to suggest that the...

The impact of the Central and Eastern European economies' trade integration with European markets on CEE trade structures has been studied extensively. These studies frequently observe a quality upgrading of CEE exports. In this paper we consider three dimensions of quality upgrading upgrading...

In this paper we examine the impact of membership in Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) on trade between PTA members. Rather than considering the impact of PTA membership on the volume of trade we consider the impact of membership on the structure of trade. For a large sample of countries over...

This paper addresses the link between productivity and labour mobility. The hypothesis tested in the paper is that technology is transmitted across industries through the movement of skilled workers embodying human capital. The embodied knowledge is then diffused within the new environment...

We analyse the robustness of potential determinants of the differences in the long-run growth rate of GDP per capita across EU regions using quantile regression. We propose using Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) methods on the class of quantile regression models in order to assess the set of...

In this paper we consider the trade creating effects of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) for a large sample of countries over the period 1960-2000. The paper builds upon the existing literature by examining whether any significant effects of PTAs occur through a change in the variety of...