Policy makers at all levels of government believe that one of the key drivers of local economic growth is new businesses. Therefore, governments design policy with the intention of attracting businesses with the hopes that this will create future growth in struggling areas. Over the past few...

Insufficiently flexible labour markets combined with high welfare costs are often thought to be the main cause of unsatisfactory growth in Europe. This paper uses the OECD data on regulation of the product and labour market to confirm the difference in the extent of regulation between US and...

Information costs and regulatory barriers are the main distinguishing features of international financial markets as compared to national financial markets. This paper presents a simple model of the impact of these factors on banks' cross-border activities and provides empirical evidence. Our...

This paper analyzes the factors underlying the weakness of the euro. For this purpose, the framework advocated by Clarida and Gali (1994) is used. Within this model, three structural shocks drive the dynamics of the endogenous variables: aggregate supply shocks, aggregate spending shocks, and...

The prospects for labour supply in Europe are considered. The analysis begins with a so-called labour market balance covering the development on an aggregate level. Estimations to shed light on the relation between unemployment and labour force participation are given in the second part of the...

If the technological revolution which has taken place over the past decades has lowered information costs and if information costs increase in distance, distance should - ceteris paribus - become less important in determining international bank lending. We are using a dataset on assets and...

This paper outlines the essentials of electricity market regulation in the United States and in California. It deals with the Federal laws (PUHCA, FPA, PURPA, EPAct) and with the regulatory policy of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) (particularly order 888, 889, and 2000)....