This paper provides empirical evidence that helps to answer several key questions relating to the extent and causes of urban sprawl in Europe. Building on the monocentric city model, this study uses existing data sources to derive a set of panel data for 282 European cities at three time points...

The Swedish policy response to covid-19 stands out as exceptional in international comparisons. The approach adopted is fundamentally determined by the Swedish constitution. Three articles of the constitution are central for this explanation. The first one guarantees the freedom of movement for...

The Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) developed by Xavier Salai-Martín, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, has been measuring the factors that drive the growth and prosperity since 2005. This paper focuses on grouping the European nations according to global competitiveness. It...

As country after country in the European Union is called to respond to the current challenge of our time - high inflation and declining real wages - governments must engage in a transformative agenda and go beyond emergency energy vouchers and income support cashtransfers. And if the goal is to...

In 2015, the EU regional / cohesion policy has passed its 40th anniversary. During this time, it has undergone various manifestations with ever-changing objectives. It started as a mixture of structural and regional policy aimed at reducing regional economic disparities within the Union. Since...

Comparing cities by the use of indicators representing numerous aspects of urban life is crucial to policy decisions, such as the funding allocation for urban development. Principal Component Analysis reveals a small number of indicators – from an initial set of 46 – which have a high impact...

This paper investigates the relationship between regional autonomy and the quality of governments in 171 European regions. We employ a novel dose-response approach that allows us to identify the distribution of the effect of decentralization on quality of governments. We find that the...

We investigate the relationship between diversity and productivity in Europe using an original dataset covering the NUTS 3 regions of 12 countries of the EU15 (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, former Western Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United...

The aim of this report is to ascertain priority concerns for further climate proofing action through opposing current EU efforts to different threats, and suggest complementary options (cf. chapter 3) for the following four sectors: (1) Energy, (2) Transport infrastructure, (3) Urban areas, and...