This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different...

Mit einem umfassenden und in der Öffentlichkeit höchst umstrittenen Handels- und Investitionsabkommen (TTIP) wollen die EU und die USA die größte Freihandelszone der Welt errichten und damit Wachstum und Beschäftigung stimulieren. Zwar prognostizieren alle bisherigen TTIP-Studien positive...

The EU candidate and potential candidate countries have made considerable progress in economic transition and integration into the world economy within less than two decades. Nevertheless, gaps in terms of income per capita relative to the euro area remain large. This suggests that the...

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....

Despite significant economic reforms in many Southern Mediterranean EU neighbour countries, their growth performance has on average been subdued. This study analyses the differences in growth performance and macroeconomic stability across Mediterranean countries, to draw lessons for the future....

Auslöser meiner Überlegungen ist die akute Flüchtlingskrise. Es spricht manches dafür, dass sich diese Krise nicht einfach mit einigen administrativen Maßnahmen der Zuwanderungsbeschränkung in kurzer Frist in Luft auflösen wird. Vermutlich ist sie Symptom für eine neue Welle der...

Die Studie betrachtet die Wirtschaft der Staaten in Subsahara-Afrika, auf die nur 2 % des weltweiten Bruttoinlandsprodukts entfallen. Unter Nutzung statistischer Daten wird untersucht, ob deutsche Unternehmen Wirtschaftspartner in der Region fanden. Zwar haben mehrere Tausend KMU dahin...

This paper provides an overview of longer-term structural developments in the new EU Member States from Central and Eastern Europe (NMS). It analyses structural changes in the NMS' economies and patterns of productivity catching-up both at macro level and within the individual industries. With...

Conventional econometric analysis using VEC suggests that there is a long-term relationship between nominal world GDP and nominal world exports. The analysis cannot say anything about the causal relationships between the levels of GDP and exports. But it says a lot about the rules governing the...

There has been an ongoing trend towards increasing internationalisation of production over the past two decades or so. This implies that countries become more dependent on demand from foreign countries but also that countries and industries are able to source intermediates from different...