Overall, the prospects for a continued and reasonably fast real convergence process between the EU8 countries and the euro area are good. However, the continuation of the rapid progress made by many EU8 countries in the past cannot be taken for granted. In fact, in order to ensure that fast...

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...

In the wake of high and rising oil prices since 2003, the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have seen dynamic economic development, enhancing their role in the global economy as investors and trade partners. Real GDP growth has been buoyant, with non-oil activity expanding...

It is generally acknowledged that employment in our economies is increasingly dependent on services. European countries are continuing their gradual move towards a service-based economy with today nearly 70% of the total labour force being employed in service activities. It is also generally...

We discuss the selection of the socially optimal discount rate for public investment projects that entail costs and benefits in the very long run. More specifically, we examine in an expected utility framework how the uncertainty on the growth rate of the GNP per head affects this rate. Under...

A number of recent papers have found that certain measures of pollution worsen and later improve as income per head increases. It is widely believed that the downhill portion of this inverted-U curve reflects an induced policy response; that, as incomes rise, citizens demand improvements in...

The number of studies seeking to empirically characterize the reduced-form relationship between a country's economic growth and the quantity of various pollutants produced has recently increased significantly. In several cases researchers have found evidence in favor of an inverted-U...

We use a new data set for European manufacturing firms to assess whether a short term technological convergence process has been taking place among manufacturing firms in seven European countries. The empirical analysis aims to study the effects of international co-operative R&D on short term...

The empirical analysis of the micro links between trade and knowledge diffusion allows us to distinguish among the key predictions of the theoretical literature on endogenous growth. This literature postulates that total factor productivity (TFP) is higher when trade gives access to a wider or...

Why do Scandinavian countries perform better in terms of environmental protection than other European Union countries? In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that societies characterised by low-income inequality (such as the Nordic European countries) generate political-economic equilibria...