After two years of highly dynamic growth in Austria, the global slowdown impacted in 2012 when Austria's economy managed just a relatively minor increase of its real GDP (+0.8 percent). With a few exceptions, all the economic sectors reported value-added growth rates lower than those of the...

We augment the existing literature on regional convergence by uncovering a number of stylized facts on the heterogeneity of regional convergence processes in the absence of currency devaluation as a key policy instrument, and use them to highlight reform strategies that are most likely to be...

The empirical literature on mergers, market power and collusion in differentiated markets has mainly focused on methods relying on output and/or panel data. In contrast to this literature we suggest a novel approach that allows for the detection of collusive behaviour among a group of firms...

Given the recent economic problems of southern EU countries that are rooted in lacking competitiveness, this task will summarise existing knowledge on the factors impeding on or facilitating the economic development of peripheral/low income regions in the EU, and discuss policy options to...

The crisis-ridden countries of southern Europe find themselves in a situation comparable to the one of flagging regions within a country: both are members of a currency union – the euro area in the first case, and the common national currency in the second. In both cases, a key policy...

We analyze unconditional within-country convergence from 1991 to 2009 in 21 European countries. Unlike most previous studies we focus on the heterogeneity of convergence. We find that convergence processes in currency unions are extremely heterogenous, highly discontinuous and strongly...

Gross value added grew at a slow rate everywhere in Austria, due to the fact that exports, the traditional drivers of growth, failed as propellant. The brightening of national and international prospects in the second half of the year helped industrial regions, gaining them a slight growth edge...

This paper highlights the importance of "centrality" for pricing. Firms characterised by a more central position in a spatial network are more powerful in terms of having a stronger impact on their competitors' prices and on equilibrium prices. These propositions are derived from a simple...

The experiences of 259 regions in 21 European countries with within country GDP per capita and labour productivity growth suggest that variables associated with pro-active, growth oriented strategies are consistently more important predictors of successful regional development than variables...

The empirical literature on mergers, market power and collusion in differentiated markets has mainly focused on methods relying on output and/or panel data. In contrast to this literature we suggest a novel approach that allows for the detection of collusive behavior among a group of firms...