The performance of a firm is influenced by decisions made by the firm itself as well as factors external to it. Firm competencies are important but also competencies that pertain to territories. External factors encompass different aspects of the environmental context in which firms operate,...

This paper is concerned with measuring and influencing the direction of technological change. First, it provides a comprehensive assessment of the factor bias of technological change using panel data from the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) for 25 EU countries from 1995 to 2009. We measure...

The paper investigates whether the poor productivity performance of the European business services industry is related to scale effects, market structure, and regulatory impacts. We apply parametric and nonparametric methods to estimate the productivity frontier and so obtain the distance of...

Whether foreign direct investment (FDI) is beneficial to host country growth or not is a question debated since a long time. This paper provides a survey of the literature on FDI, export and growth, and empirically investigates the causal relationship between economic growth, export and FDI for...

We investigate when market making can be profitable in the European Carbon Futures market, by developing an order type selection rule, based solely on transaction level data. We employ a granular approach that uses an observable variable, i.e. trading intensity, to extract the liquidity and...

This paper analyses the level of relative specialisation in terms of gross fixed capital formation in EU regions for the period between 1985 and 1994. Controlling for heteroscedasticity and potential endogeneity problems, we get consistent econometric results. Larger market and regional sizes...

This study analyses relative sectoral investment patterns in EU regions. In an exploratory spatial data analysis, spatial clusters of high relative investments can be identified for some sectors. In the econometric analysis, we control for heteroscedasticity and potential endogeneity and find...

This paper provides evidence that, since the sign of Maastricht Treaty, euro-area monetary authorities mainly follow a strong anti-inflationary policy. This policy can be described by a threshold monetary policy rule model which allows for distinct inflation policy regimes: a low and high. The...

This paper analyses the level of relative specialisation in terms of gross fixed capital formation in EU regions. Larger market and regional sizes diminish; a higher unemployment rate, population density, the fact of being a central region, the distance to the economic centre, and economic...

We consider the effect of an increase in public investments on output in Europe against the background of a sharp drop of public investments in a number of EU countries during the crisis and subsequent policy discussions on the need to stimulate public investments. We start with a brief overview...