The European Union’s (EU) role in international trade has evolved from a defensive position during the 1960s and 1970s, to being a firm supporter of a rule-based multilateral trading system as a member of the Quad (US, EU, Japan and Canada) in the 1980s and to a role in which it aspires to...

Dale T. Mortensen (born 1939) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2010 jointly with Peter A. Diamond and Christopher A. Pissarides for his work on the analysis of markets with search frictions. Together, they developed the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides Model (DMP model): an equilibrium...

The EU budget is a tool through which money is collected and allocated for EU policies and objectives as well as for the tasks transferred to it from the national level. This article starts by presenting the concept and evolution of the EU budget. It then discusses the principles and procedures...

A two-part tariff is a pricing scheme according to which the buyer pays to the seller a fixed fee and a constant charge for each unit purchased. When it is used, the average price paid decreases as more units are purchased. Further, it is the marginal charge and not the fixed fee that determines...

The introduction of the euro in 1999 is without any doubt one of the great achievements in the European integration process. In one bold stroke, national monetary sovereignty was abolished and transferred to a new European institution, the European Central Bank, that from then on became the...

Professor Christopher Pissarides was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics jointly with Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen ‘for their analysis of markets with search frictions’. Though Pissarides is best known for his work in this area, it is only part of a very extensive research agenda...

Recent events have led to a renewed effort to understand the nature of cyclical fluctuations in the price and quantity of new investment in housing. This paper provides a brief summary of the existing literature modelling housing and the business cycle.

Elinor Ostrom, a recipient of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2009, had a foundational contribution to the Public Choice movement and to the rise of the new institutionalism and has been a key figure in the resurgence of political economy. Her studies...

Solow's method of decomposing the growth in aggregate output into that part due to growth in inputs and that part due to technological progress has become the standard method for measuring technological progress, or growth in total factor productivity. This contribution outlines the method and...

Gasoline retail markets have traditionally attracted a lot of attention from researchers and policy makers. This entry reviews a set of questions studied by Industrial Organisation (IO) economists related to this market. The discussion is organised around three themes. The first reviews papers...