Significant progress has been made by the East African Community partner states in implementing the East African Community customs union. Trade within the East African Community is now free from import duties, and partner states have adopted a three-band common external tariff. This paper...

This study looks at the relationship between trade integration and labour markets for a group of OECD economies (USA, Japan, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom). We examine particularly trade relationships between these OECD economies and different groups of 'Southern'...

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 analyses the structural changes that have taken place in CEE candidate countries' manufacturing industry during the last decade. In the more advanced candidate countries for EU membership, industry has been able to recover at least part of its previous position thanks to active...

Exporting firms are affected in many ways by competition on foreign markets. This paper focuses on the impact of Asian competition on the bilateral export performance of Belgian firms, controlling for firm level as well as destination-market characteristics. Export performance is measured in...

The process of the East-West integration has come to a point that enlargement appears inevitable. But are these countries really ready to join the EU in tfirms of competitive perfirmance? Firstly, we construct a virtual best practice production frontier for firms active in a European Union...

This paper investigates the connection between firm entry and exit and labour productivity growth. The study has its theoretical foundations in modern Schumpeterian growth theory, distance to frontier model and vintage capital models. The importance of productivity enhancing restructuring has...

This paper estimates an import demand function for the euro area vis--vis its main extra-area trading partners which takes into account the possible impact of both intra- and extra-euro area exchange rate uncertainty. We derive a theoretical model which captures various mechanisms by which...

Two seemingly unconnected empirical results suggest an intriguing mechanism. First, economic integration helps harmonize prices internationally, with trade being the primary channel (Rogoff 1996, Goldberg and Knetter 1997). Second, monetary union may greatly increase the amount of trade among...

In addition to its direct effects on the global trading and production structure, the ongoing process of globalisation may have important implications for the interaction of exchange rates and the overall economy. This paper presents evidence regarding possible changes in the role of exchange...