This study was commissioned by the European Commission, Directorate General "Enterprise and Industry" and was completed at the end of 2005. The objective was to investigate the impact of the accession of new member states on the intra-European division of labour and on global competitiveness in...

This paper analyses the Balassa and Samuelson hypothesis in two groups of European countries: six New Member States (NMS) and six advanced EU-15 economies. It is found that the second stage of the hypothesis, which relates relative sector prices with the real exchange rate, does not hold...