This chapter discusses factors that contributed to different economic dynamics across European regions and the prevailing disparities. The impact of EU Cohesion Policy in reducing disparities is studied based on the empirical evidence on the effects of EU regional policy. With more than thirty...

We quantify general equilibrium effects of place-based policies in a multi-region framework with mobility, trade and agglomeration economies. Using detailed data on EU transfers, we infer the local effects of different transfer types on productivity, income and transportation cost. Based on...

We quantify general equilibrium effects of place-based policies in a multiregion framework with mobility, trade and agglomeration economies. Using detailed data on EU transfers, we infer the local effects of different transfer types on productivity, income and transportation cost. Based on these...

More than one third of the European Union's total budget is spent on socalled Cohesion Policy via the structural funds. Its main purpose is to promote the development of the EU and to support convergence between the levels of development of the various European regions. Investigating the impact...

Social trust is increasingly seen as an important determinant of economic growth and social prosperity in regions and nations. Even in a comparatively homogeneous area such as Europe, there are stark sub-national differences in levels of generalized trust. It is thus of crucial importance to...

Using data from the OECD Regional Well-Being Index - a set of quality-of-life indicators measured at the sub-national level, we construct a set of composite well-being indices. We analyse the extent to which the choice of five alternative aggregation methods affects the well-being ranking of...

The ongoing European crisis has revealed many deficiencies in the existing European institutional architecture. One of the crucial deficiencies is the unsustainable European regional disparity between the most developed European regions and those regions that are falling behind — a gap that is...

This article analyzes the role of different elements of social capital in economic growth for a sample of 85 European regions during the period 1995-2008. Much has been said about social capital in the last two decades, but studies for the European regional context are scant, and those analyzing...

This paper examines the effects of state borders on the performance of metropolitan areas in Europe. A multi-dimensional conceptualization of border effects is elaborated and empirically tested with the help of statistical modelling. The results suggest that Swiss cases and metropolitan areas...

Even if Romania succeeded to become a member of the European Union, the development gaps between its regions and those in the other member states continue to be significant. The paper will focus on analyzing the regional disparities in Romania, in terms of GDP/capita, FDI and possibly state...