We provide a comprehensive survey of the recent literature on the link between productive government expenditure and economic growth. Starting with the seminal paper of Robert Barro (1990) we show that an understanding of the core results of the ensuing contributions can be gained from the study...

The three essays of this dissertation contribute to the measurement of European economic integration and investigate the welfare effects of the European countries. The first study presents a newly developed index – the EU Index – which measures the extent of economic integration into the...