In our increasingly globalized economy, global competitiveness of countries and means to measure it gain increasing significance. One of the ways to measure it is by comparing an extent of economic freedom that countries have, which as surveys show can also largely explain differences in living...

Utilising panel data for 14 East European transition economies, we find support for the hypothesis that a greater degree of export variety relative to the U.S. helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The empirical work relies upon some direct measures of product variety calculated from...

We adopt a Panel Threshold Autoregressive (PTAR) model to investigate the export-led growth (ELG) hypothesis in six Middle East and North Africa countries from 1976 to 2005. Two regimes are distinguished according to the threshold variable export-import ratio. Then, the non-linear...

The development of pre-industrial Europe was driven by the expansion of trade. This paper describes the patterns of trade and shows how they can be understood in terms of differences in trading costs. It discusses how the different levels of trade?from local to transoceanic-contributed, both...

In pre-industrial Europe, growth was driven by the expansion of trade, and the expansion of trade was driven by falling trading costs. This paper discusses the mechanisms linking these processes: profit-seeking behavior by merchants, changes in the organization of production, technological...

This paper investigates the possibility of Granger causality between the logarithms of real exports and real GDP in twenty-five OECD countries, between 1960 and 1998. Two complementary testing strategies are applied. First, depending on the time series properties of the data, causality is tested...

Regarding economic freedom, research shows that although it has its negative effects, especially in a shorter term, e.g., the phase of increasing inequality, overall trends are indicative that countries with higher levels of economic freedom have not only higher gross domestic product per capita...

As measured by gains in their shares in international exports over the period 1985 to 2000, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland have successfully become export platforms for investors. The performance of other countries in Central and Eastern Europe has lagged behind in this respect. This...

Economic growth is a frequently analyzed aspect, both from theoretical and empirical standpoint, under the impact of the influence factors, while the issue of economic growth was studied by applying different methods and obtaining different results. In the case of EU28, the problem of economic...

Considering that the modified and improved ICT service becomes a commodity in the domestic and foreign markets, it can be said with complete certainty that the improved service in the domestic market, i. e. as a commodity, meets the demand of domestic consumers. But the updated and improved ICT...