Support of agriculture is justified, among others, by its contribution to rural economic development. Nevertheless, the relation between agricultural and general economic development may be ambiguous. On the one side, agriculture may affect other sectors positively via multiplier and income...

The paper attempts to identify with the help of a panel model the presence of common or divergent development patterns and some significant factors of competitiveness at national and regional level (mainly regarding investment and employment, overall and by main economic sectors). The results...

The EU regions have been experiencing a period of unprecedented change. The ongoing (and parallel) processes of EU integration and enlargement have progressively transformed regional economies to integral parts of the emerging (European) socio-economic space, exposing them to the forces and the...

Development gaps are a common feature throughout the regions of the European Union, and Romania is no exception. Despite all the political and financial efforts, the convergence process is lengthy and complex, and the gaps with the deepest economic and social roots are the most difficult to be...

Socio-ecological transitions are a main project, current EU policies, national environmental politics, and regional as well as local action address. Manifold approaches exist and the European Union is anxious to coordinate and facilitate the process of a consolidated transition. Therefore, a...

The paper aims to explore international trade flows of the countries involved in the EU eastward enlargement processes – the current EU members (EU15) and the candidate countries (CC12). The empirical results of the study allow us to conclude that the behaviour of bilateral trade flows within...

It is widely recognised that public-sector purchasers tend to discriminate in favour of domestic suppliers. We study the consequences of home-biased public procurement on international specialisation. In the theoretical analysis we find two effects. First, a country will specialise in the sector...

This paper adopts a spatial econometric perspective to analyse regional convergence of per capita income in Europe in 1995 to 2000 and, moreover, relaxes the assumption of a single steady-state growth path which appears to be out of tune with reality of empirical dynamics. The two-club spatial...

In explaining the uneven spatial distribution of economic activity, urban economics and new economic geography (NEG) dominate recent research in economics. A main difference between these two approaches is that NEG stresses the role of spatial linkages whereas urban economics does not do so. We...