Despite the EU emphasis on the 1995 Barcelona process, trade integration with the Mediterranean (MED) countries is still underdeveloped. To contrast the success of EU integration with MED countries and that with the new EU members, we compute the trade potential of these EU partners from 1995 to...

This paper attempts to forecast the EU-Romania trade using the gravity approach developed in Ferragina, Giovannetti and Pastore (2005). The trade potential of Romania with five EU members (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK) is computed using an “out-of-sample” methodology for the period...

It is often claimed that what is popularly known as the "flying geese paradigm" of dynamic comparative advantage has accurately depicted the East Asian catching-up process. This paper presents a critical study of the paradigm, as well as its application to the current situation in East Asia...

Mercosur has appeared as the most promising regional trade agreement ever since its creation in 1991. This paper compares its objectives with some of its early results, especially increased foreign direct investment and trade volumes — despite some controversial studies suggesting that...

Promising growth rates, increased trade, and competition among major global players for African resources have boosted the development and bargaining power of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in relation to the EU. However, Africa's least developed countries remain vulnerable to external shocks....

We propose a new, valuation-based measure of world equity market segmentation. While we observe decreased levels of segmentation in many developing countries, the level of segmentation is still significant. In contrast to previous research, we characterize the factors that account for variation...

Brazil is a country with long-standing ambitions for a major role in the world economy and in global governance, but its footprint in various measures of both remains relatively modest. On current trends, the gap between ambition and achievement will likely remain large, so we provide a critique...

This paper examines the questions of whether and how feudal rulers were able to credibly commit to preserving monetary stability, and of which consequences their decisions had for the efficiency of financial markets. The study reveals that princes were usually only able to commit to issuing a...