European integration has always been a political and economic process that is open to all European countries prepared to sign up to the founding treaties and take on board the full body of EU law. According to Article 237 of the Treaty of Rome ‘any European state may apply to become a member...

Scholars have long observed that states play off overlapping international institutions against one another in an effort to advance their policy objectives. This article identifies a strategy utilized by the EU in response to regime complexity that I term “backdoor bargaining.” Unlike...

Efforts to address the sustainability crisis, especially in the U.S., have made important strides over the last twenty-five years, and continue to evolve. Yet, current sustainability discourse and practice reveal some challenges, risks and emerging needs. In particular, the modern sustainability...

Indicator-based frameworks for assessing farms' environmental performance have become a resource for environmental knowledge regarding the impacts of agricultural practices. The present study explores whether a novel indicator-based direct payment system, which focuses on the farms'...

In this paper we study the effect of the single currency across industries for euro area members. This analysis may help to shed light on the main factors influencing the euro effect on trade flows. We intend to verify whether these factors are specific to individual sectors and/or countries or...

Regional unemployment rates in the European Union (EU-15) reveal a core-periphery structure. Large ?core? regions in the middle of the continent have low unemployment rates, whereas excessive mass unemployment is predominantly found in the peripheral regions at the outside borders of EU-15. This...

This paper presents an estimated DSGE model for the European Monetary Union. Our approach, contrary to the previous studies, accounts for heterogeneity within the euro area. We advance the empirical literature by estimating an open-economy model with unfiltered data, which is a much more...

Foreign direct investment is of increasing importance in the European Union. This paper estimates the effect of taxes on foreign direct investment (FDI) flows and on three sub-components of these flows for the countries of the en- larged European Union. The model in the spirit of gravity...

European economic integration is commonly believed to be incomplete, and that further reforms are needed. In this context, the union of U.S. states is considered the benchmark of complete economic integration and is often the basis for comparison regarding the extent of E.U economic integration....