The relationship between government size and growth has received an enormous attention in the economics literature, and the recent financial crisis has forced this topic back on the agenda. A highly controversial debate in this respect is whether large governments are harmful for growth....

I analyse the skill and age structure of commuters in 14 EU countries. Theory implies that commuters can be either more or less able than stayers, but are always less able than migrants and that they are also always older than migrants but younger than stayers. Empirically all types of commuters...

We offer an empirical, econometric analysis of the impact of migration on the EU 27's NUTS-2 regions in the period 2000-2007. While our results indicate that migration had no statistical impact on regional unemployment in the EU it had a significant impact on both per-capita GDP and...

This paper analyses openness to trade, migration and foreign direct investment (FDI) using panel data. The focus is on the relationship between 15 EU countries (EU 15) as destination countries, and 71 trading partner countries which send migrants and receive FDI outflows, where only those...

After the crisis years of 2008 and 2009 EU countries followed different employment paths. Employment and wage levels, for instance, are quite unevenly distributed across Europe. Some of the EU countries expect labour shortages due to demographic change in the future. If this is the case, wages...

The environmental effectiveness of an emission trading system depends on the one hand on the stringency of the cap and on the other hand on the scheme's ability to provide stable regulatory conditions and incentives for investment in emission saving technologies. However, in case of highly...

After the climate conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun, it is likely that the EU remains more ambitious regarding greenhouse gas reduction targets than other countries. The possible problem of carbon leakage and instruments to tackle it therefore remains an important issue in the European...

The European Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is a key instrument in European climate policy and covers emitters from the energy and manufacturing sector. The ETS pilot phase (2005-2007) was characterised by an oversupply of emission allowances mainly due to the "generous" allocation of...

The aim of this paper is the econometric analysis of embodied and induced technological change that reduces energy input and CO2 emissions in production. For this purpose, a model of unit costs and factor demand for 35 industries in 23 EU countries has been set up, based on the World...

Europe (and in particular the European Union) is a regional economic area and thus an embedded feature of globalisation. Since the Lisbon Treaty entered into effect on 1 December 2009, the EU has grown from a "political midget" to a notable political "global player". Although Europe has...