Despite considerable progress regarding Mew Member States’ (NMS) nominal convergence with Euro-zone countries, the record is more mixed regarding real/structural convergence. At the same time, almost all NMS face the additional challenge of combining economic and monetary integration with the...

We consider whether openness is related to the aggregate technical efficiency in the OECD countries. We obtain efficiency measures using Data Envelopment Analysis and we find that our measure of openness is positively related to the technical efficiency scores.

The success of the European Union is remarkable. But the current economic crisis is severely testing support. It is affecting member nations in different ways, and for some the crisis has been painful. Without individual control over their economic policies, some nations are getting frustrated....

Austerity policies again prevail in Europe as well as in the United States. These economists, based in England and continental Europe, focus on the poorly understood damage that the austerity mania will almost certainly do on their side of the Atlantic. Why is it happening? There is no rational...

In this paper, we deal with some pieces of evidence that are necessary to explain the paradox of rapid GDP growth despite the dismal competitiveness of the Greek economy during 1995-2008. It is shown how the structural weaknesses of the Greek economy have hit the domestic economy investigating...