This paper is the final report of a research project whose aim was to analyse the methodology of calculating the costs and benefits for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia of the envisaged accession to the European Union. The research focused particularly on the impact of the...

This paper discusses the economic effects of EU enlargement for the group of Central and East European accession countries (ACs). It consists of three parts In Part A the financial aspects of accession to the EU are explained. It deals firstly with the outcome of the negotiations at the December...

The order and modalities of cross-member state redistribution as well as the net financial position of the member states are one of the most widely discussed aspects of European integration. The paper addresses selected issues in the current debate on the EU budget for the period 2007 to 2013...

The periodically returning debates and the disappointing bargaining on the financial perspectives for 2007-2013 have led to the proposal of a comprehensive review of the EU budget in 2008/2009. This provides an opportunity for initiating fundamental reforms of the revenue side of the EU budget....

The 'juste retour' attitude, namely each EU member state's priority for securing the best possible individual net financial position vis-à-vis the community budget over any other consideration concerning the community budget is stronger than ever. The differences across member states in terms...

Europa muss sich entscheiden, ob es die gewachsene Zusammenarbeit vertiefen oder aber reduzieren will. Unter Ökonomen dominiert Skepsis. Viele würden das Euro-Rad am liebsten zurückdrehen. Was dagegen fehlt, ist eine plausible Vision, wie es vorangehen könnte. Kernelemente sollten...

We study the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on total factor productivity (TFP) of domestic firms using a new, representative firm-level data set spanning six countries. A novel finding is that firm-level spillovers from foreign firms to domestic companies can be significantly...

This paper criticises the standard methodology used to measure the importance of different channels of risk sharing in federal states such as the one used in Asdrubali et al.'s (1996) seminal contribution. It argues that the methodology chosen in these papers systematically underestimates the...

Commercial integration in the Mercosur area has increased substantially in the last few years and it is expected to continue to grow rapidly in the near future. However, given the historical record of policy management in the region, especially in Brazil and Argentina, the main partners of this...

The seven-nation Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand is emerging as one of the major subregional groups in Asia. Japan is the second largest trading partner for...