The analysis of bilateral trade flows features prominently in empirical research in international economics. Various different international statistical sources are available for researchers and commonly used. Unfortunately, the data happen to differ quite substantially across the different...

This paper evaluates different options of labour market policy and tax reform with payroll tax reductions for the Spanish economy in the current situation of high unemployment and debt constraints for public and private households. The Spanish economy in the aftermath of the Great Recession is...

Right from the start of the European currency union, trade imbalances could be observed in the current accounts and trade balances of the euro countries. The business cycle upswing reaching into 2008 and the strong inflow of cheap money led to a strong economic expansion especially in the...

Post-war European integration is a succession of regime changes: customs union in the 1960s, Single Market and EMU in the 1990s and EU enlargement in the 2000s. Since 1995 Austria as an EU member takes part in the deepening of EU integration (Single Market, EMU and Monetary Union) and...

With a comprehensive Trade and Investment Agreement, called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) the European Union and the USA aim at creating the world's largest free trade area. It should help to stimulate growth and create new jobs. All TTIP studies so far forecast positive...

Europe (and in particular the European Union) is a regional economic area and thus an embedded feature of globalisation. Since the Lisbon Treaty entered into effect on 1 December 2009, the EU has grown from a "political midget" to a notable political "global player". Although Europe has...

In the early 1970s, E.F. Schumacher criticised western industrial countries in the face of emerging globalisation by using a term generated by Leopold Kohr: "Small is beautiful." Seen against the progressing enlargement of the EU we need to ask whether and to what extent small is still...

The report underpins the discussion of applications of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in the welfare sector. Greater use of ICTs is embedded in the Europa 2020 growth strategy which sees the availability of broadband access as a prerequisite for the use of such services....

The study examines four methods to allocate changes in employment to the various employment size categories. For annual data, the reference parameter should be the average size of the enterprise or a dynamic allocation procedure. Due to regression bias, job creation by smaller enterprises is...

Europe is in the throes of budgetary consolidation, tightening its fiscal rules. It could not prevent the recession of 2012 and the inexorable growth of debt, especially in Southern Europe, while unemployment spreads and the social gap widens. Social policy is mostly a national matter, but is...