Against the background of increasing competition and other significant structural changes implied by globalisation, maintaining and enhancing competitiveness has evolved into one of the prime concerns in most countries. Following up on previous work (see in particular ECB Occasional Papers No....

This paper investigates how the European integration process of central eastern European countries, which has been taking place since the 1990's, affects their GDP growth. Based on an augmented Solow model, I estimate a convergence equation for a panel of ten countries over 16 years (1995-2010)....

In the present contribution, we concentrate on the process of financial liberalization in a specific context of European economic and monetary integration. We implement de facto and de jure measures of financial liberalization and find that formal aspects of financial openness generate a...

This paper develops composite indicators of financial integration within the euro area for both price-based and quantity-based indicators covering money, bond, equity and banking markets. Prior to aggregation, individual integration indicators are harmonised by applying the probability integral...

In this paper we conduct a meta-analysis to examine the link between R&D spending and economic growth in the EU and other regions. The results suggest that the growth-enhancing effect of R&D in the EU15 countries does not differ from that in other countries in general, but it is less significant...

This paper presents new estimates of the economic benefits from economic and political integration. Using the synthetic counterfactuals method, we estimate how GDP per capita and labour productivity would have behaved for the countries that joined the European Union (EU) in the 1973, 1980s, 1995...

This article aims to answer the question of whether a membership in the European Union contributed to an accelerated economic growth of eleven Central and Eastern European (CEE or EU11) countries, including their real convergence to the economic development level of Western Europe (EU15). The...

A growing number of recent research analyse the trade balance impact on economic growth. However, ambiguous results of studies imply the need for the research as the deteriorating trade balance hinders economic growth. This research aims to investigate the impact of the trade balance on economic...

The determination of the equilibrium real exchange rate is one of the most important issues in open economy since the policymakers are concerned about predicting and monitoring misalignments and they are usually associated with current account problems and currency crises. To the best of my...