This paper tests, in the context of the EU countries, the evidence presented by Hidalgo and Hausmann (2009) that economic complexity indicator is a good predictor of economic growth. Our results suggest that a group of countries in the EU with an economic complexity exceeding a certain threshold...

We analyze unconditional within-country convergence from 1991 to 2009 in 21 European countries. Unlike most previous studies we focus on the heterogeneity of convergence. We find that convergence processes in currency unions are extremely heterogenous, highly discontinuous and strongly...

The experiences of 259 regions in 21 European countries with within country GDP per capita and labour productivity growth suggest that variables associated with pro-active, growth oriented strategies are consistently more important predictors of successful regional development than variables...

This paper provides comparative analysis of the proximate causes of growth of South East European, Central European and Former Soviet Union countries. The first section covers comparative sources of growth analysis for GDP. Apart from this conventional sources-of-growth analysis, both the demand...

Eastern Europe is one of the fastest growing transition economies of the world. The post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, especially the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, continue to undergo a radical economic reform program via microeconomic liberalization, macroeconomic...

This study analyses the impact of economic catching-up on annual inflation rates in the European Union with a special focus on the new member countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Using an array of estimation methods, we show that the Balassa-Samuelson effect is not an important driver of...

Labor productivity levels in Bulgaria lag well behind that in the EU, weighing on the convergence process. Stronger productivity growth would allow Bulgaria to close the income gap with the EU average more quickly and to alleviate the structural problems in its labor market, reflected in its...

The EU candidate and potential candidate countries have made considerable progress in economic transition and integration into the world economy within less than two decades. Nevertheless, gaps in terms of income per capita relative to the euro area remain large. This suggests that the...

The paper discusses the impact and implications of Korean unification by setting up a two-region endogenous growth model. The numerical solutions are based on the formal analytical model, and have been calibrated so that they reflect the observed features of the North and South Korean economies....