The European Commission has launched a new industrial policy for Europe, which is reviewed in this paper. While manufacturing industry remains a key building block of the European economy, it faces a number of challenges - as well as opportunities - in the form of rapid technological change;...

This paper critically examines the role of industrial policy in the economic development of East Asian countries with a view to drawing lessons for other countries, especially European ones. It describes the evolution of industrial policies in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore and evaluates...

Spillovers from national industrial policies can cause helpful or harmful competition among policy makers and helpful or harmful interactions among the targeted industries. As a result, it is not in general possible to say whether industrial policy coordination is good or bad. However, reaching...

Competition policy has seen quite significant changes over the past years. With the reform of Merger Control and the application of Article 81 (agreements) an "effects-based, economic approach" was formally introduced by the Commission. Two other areas of competition policy are under discussion,...

Considering industrial policy from the perspective of other economic policies, this paper seeks to identify the sources and consequences of conflicts between industrial, competition, trade, and fiscal policies. The goals of industrial policy, even when economically justified in isolation, are in...

We extend the paper of Hinloopen and van Marrewijk (2005), who introduce the harmonic mass index to test whether two samples come from the same distribution, in the following directions. Firstly, we derive the Harmonic Weighted Mass (HWM) index for any number of samples. Secondly, this paper...

This paper presents and analyses the results of a survey of some 400 credit institutions in the European Union carried out by the European Investment Bank in the summer of 2003. An indepth analysis of the survey responses of 74 participating banks leads to the following conclusions: (1) despite...

This paper focuses on the systems-of-innovation (SI) approach and its policy implications. It introduces the topic by briefly reviewing the emergence, development, and diffusion of this approach and, then, spells out the constituents, activities, and boundaries of the SI approach. On this basis,...

We consider the impact of both cyclical and structural changes in the fiscal stance on public spending composition for a panel of EU countries, including individual components of public investment. We find that both cyclically-induced and structural changes in the fiscal stance affect the...

By using an existing and a new convergence measure, this paper assesses whether bank loan and bond interest rates are converging for the non-financial corporate sector across the euro area. Whilst we find evidence for complete bond market integration, the market for bank loans remains segmented,...