We examine whether the European settlement institutions are technically efficient. This is done by means of estimating a translog cost function, and investigating whether scale economies are fully exploited. Since the sample is quite heterogeneous, fixed effects regression is introduced. From...

While the single market has largely been achieved for the EU market for goods, the services sector has lagged behind. This has resulted in sluggish activity, low productivity growth, high prices, that show a wide dispersion and relatively high inflation in this sector. Both the OECD product...

We investigate the impact of climatic change on welfare in European regions using a hedonic travel-cost framework and focusing on tourism demand. Our hedonic price estimations combine detailed hotel price information with tourism-specific travel cost estimations for each pair of EU region. This...

Before 1990, the services of general interest (SeGI) in Romania were entirely provided by the public authorities. Afterwards, the market was gradually liberalized and the SeGI captured the attention of private operators. Nowadays, the business sector is involved next to the public authorities in...

We conduct a regional analysis of the relationship between market concentration and price dynamics in the grocery retail sector, focusing on a sample of five categories of goods belonging to the 12 COICOP aggregation and on a panel of countries that includes Germany, Spain, Finland, Italy,...

The services sector is increasingly important for the euro area economy, but productivity growth in the sector has stalled over the past two decades. Remaining barriers to cross-border trade in services within the EU Single Market contribute to this weak performance. Our empirical analysis...

A Single Market for services in the European Union is not yet a reality. The European Commission launched proposals that would remove some negative trade impacts caused by national regulation differences. We apply a general equilibrium model (WorldScan) to assess what economic benefits the...

In most EU member states, the business services industry has booked no productivity growth during the last two decades. The industry's performance in the other member states was weaker than that of its US counterparts. Exploring what may be causing this productivity stagnation, this policy brief...

The Rome Treaty that forms the basis for the European Union (EU) states that goods, services, capital and labour can move freely between the member states. This paper empirically investigates the functioning of the European internal market for services, and especially the role played by the...