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...

This paper studies differences in the perception of innovation barriers between innovative and non-innovative firms for 18 EU countries. The countries are grouped by their distance to the technological frontier using Community Innovation Surveys for the years 2002-2004 and 2004-2006. The results...

Europe is in the throes of budgetary consolidation, tightening its fiscal rules. It could not prevent the recession of 2012 and the inexorable growth of debt, especially in Southern Europe, while unemployment spreads and the social gap widens. Social policy is mostly a national matter, but is...

The EU Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) that covers emitters from industry and energy supply representing 40 percent of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions is the biggest implementation of a cap-and-trade scheme worldwide. In this paper, we analyse sectoral allocation caps focusing on three...

The European Union is a successful integration experiment, with an increasing number of member countries and an unexpected depth of integration. According to many indicators, it is the largest economic region in the world, leading in many "beyond GDP" indicators representing well being including...

The paper summarises at first the main arguments in favour and against a FTT and provides empirical evidence about the movements of the most important asset prices. It is shown that their long swings result from the accumulation of extremely short-term price runs over time. Therefore a (very)...

The struggle over the FTT has developed in three phases. In the first phase (2009 to 2011) the supporters of the tax went on the offensive, supported by the "shock effects" of the financial crisis. This phase ended with the (preliminary) "victory" in the form of the FTT proposal of the European...

This paper analyses the justifications and stages of the elaboration of impact studies at the European level, focusing on the various working methods, be it 'impact matrix' or the 'logic of intervention', which may be adopted by law-makers, in order to improve the regulation mechanisms in the...