This article reflects the main findings of the White Paper on opportunities and challenges in view of enhancing the EU cooperation with Eastern Europe, Central Asia and South Caucasus in Science, Research and Innovation, which was released in April 2012, from a science and technology (S&T)...

Using 2005 firm level data for 26 ECA countries, this paper estimates performance gaps between male- and female-owned businesses, while controlling for their location by industry and country. We find that female entrepreneurs have significantly smaller scale of operations (as measured by sales...

It is frequently suggested that export diversification contributes to an acceleration of growth in developing countries. Horizontal export diversification into completely new export sectors may generate positive externalities on the rest of the economy as export oriented sectors gain from...

Pro-poor tourism is arguably one of the best green options for addressing LDC poverty, employment and economic diversification initiatives. Although often neglected as a serious policy option - and consequently most of its potential still remains untapped - tourism is the leading export for at...

This paper addresses the mechanisms by which trade openness affects growth volatility. Using a diverse set of export concentration measures, we present strong evidence pointing to an important role for export diversification in conditioning the effect of trade openness on growth volatility....

Empirical surveys find no significant impact of environmental regulation and environmental costs on international competitiveness. In the literature, we can find three hypotheses on the impact of environmental regulation. For the industrial-flight and pollution-haven hypothesis, there is no...

This paper uses panel data of 42 sub-Saharan Africa countries from 2005 to 2015 to examine the effect of aid for trade (AfT) on export diversification. The average Hirschman-Herfindahl index measure of 0.77 indicates that the export basket of sub-Saharan African countries is very narrow. This is...

This paper uses highly disaggregated trade data to investigate geographic and product diversification patterns across a group of developing nations for the period from 1990 to 2005. The econometric investigation shows that the gravity equation fits the observed differences in diversification...

The current political turmoil in the Arab world has contributed to renewed interest in the Barcelona Process. This paper explores whether deeper integration in the form of trade facilitation - i.e. improved and simplified trade procedures - could be an important part of a reform agenda. Adopting...

The literature on trade facilitation has mostly focused on implications for trade volumes. However, recent theoretical contributions have emphasized that trade costs - such as transaction costs related to cross-border trade procedures - affect both the traded volumes of "old" goods (the...