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on European Economics |
| By: | Fabrizio Onida (CESPRI, Università Bocconi, Milano) |
| Abstract: | For more than a decade Europe has been lagging behind the US in growth of aggregate GDP, per capita GDP, productivity, employment, as well as in demographic selection of new firms and in the design of market-friendly regulations. While an increasing trade agglomeration around large "regional" areas (NAFTA, Asia-Pacific, Europe) has taken place in the last decades, the US has become the primary external market outlet for many partners, including Western Europe. Moreover, trends in stocks and flows of foreign direct investment, while reflecting the increasing share of developing Asia and (to a lesser extent) of Central-Eastern Europe as countries of destination, do reveal a persistent solid Transatlantic interdependence through multinational production. An accelerating world integration of low-wages/highly productive emerging economies raises in US and Europe mounting fears of "excessive competition", massive net job destruction, downward spiral in domestic wages. While most empirical evidence points to positive "trade multiplier effects" from integration of newly industrializing economies in world economic development, national governments and international institutions are under pressure to provide effective "trade adjustment" policy measures, mainly aimed at restructuring declining activities, re-training manpower, improving infrastructures for labour mobility, favouring more technology generation and diffusion. Europe is seriously lagging under this respect. After the failure of Cancùn, both US and Europe share a big responsibility in providing new impetus to the ailing Doha Development Round. Under the pressure of the newly formed G-20, but also of the mounting tensions on the world political scenario (Islamic terrorism, Palestine, Middle East), both sides of the Atlantic seem aware of the great stakes and in search of new negotiating moves. |
| Keywords: | Europe; Transatlantic; Integration |
| JEL: | F14 F15 F23 |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cri:cespri:wp164&r=eec |
| By: | Eva Ferreira (Universidad del País Vasco); María Isabel Martínez (Universidad de Murcia); Eliseo Navarro (Universidad de Castilla La Mancha) |
| Keywords: | Economic Sentiment Indicator, yield spreads, consumer confidence expected real activi |
| JEL: | G12 E43 |
| Date: | 2005–06–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehu:dfaeii:200511&r=eec |
| By: | Ramón María-Dolores (Universidad de Murcia); Jésus Vazquez (Universidad del País Vasco) |
| Keywords: | Indirect inference, NKM model, Taylor rule, optimal policy |
| JEL: | C32 E30 E52 |
| Date: | 2005–06–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehu:dfaeii:200513&r=eec |
| By: | OECD Economics Department |
| Abstract: | This paper provides an assessment of the impact of a package of structural reforms in the European Union and the United States on long-run trade and output gains accruing to OECD countries. The package includes reforms that reduce competition-restraining regulations, cut tariff barriers and ease restrictions on foreign direct investment to "best practice" levels in the OECD area. The analysis, which is based on earlier OECD studies, indicates that such reforms could lead to gains in GDP per capita in both transatlantic areas of up to 3 to 3 ½ per cent. Moreover, due to trade linkages, the benefits of reforms in the United States and the European Union would spread to other OECD countries, with an estimated increase in GDP per capita of up to 1½ per cent. As the analysis is confined to a relatively narrow set of policies and abstracts from potential dynamic effects from reform-induced increase in innovation, the overall gains from broad reforms could be significantly higher than reported in the paper. <p> Les bénéfices de la libéralisation des marchés de produits et de la réduction des barrières aux échanges et aux investissements internationaux: le cas des Etats-Unis et de l'Union européenne <p> Ce document offre une évaluation des réformes globales structurelles en Europe et aux États-Unis sur les échanges et la croissance de long terme dans les pays de l'OCDE. Ces réformes incluent l'ensemble des mesures politiques visant la réduction de la réglementation anti-compétitive, la baisse des barrières tarifaires et des restrictions sur les investissements directs étrangers vers les "meilleures pratiques" observées au sein des pays de l'OCDE. L'analyse, qui s'appuie sur de précédents travaux de l'OCDE, montre que de telles réformes peuvent conduire à une augmentation du PIB par habitant entre 3 et 3½ pour cent. De plus, en raison d'effets de transmission via les échanges, le bénéfice des réformes en Europe et aux États-Unis devrait se répandre à l'ensemble des autres pays de l'OCDE conduisant à une augmentation du PIB moyen par habitant de plus de 1½ pour cent. Étant donné que l'analyse ne couvre qu'un nombre de mesures spécifiques et exclut les effets dynamiques potentiels de l'innovation, les bénéfices tirés d'un ensemble de réformes beaucoup plus large pourraient bien être plus élevés que ceux reportés dans ce document. |
| Keywords: | international trade; foreign direct investment; regulation; growth and productivity;United States; European Union |
| JEL: | F13 F21 K2 O4 |
| Date: | 2005–06–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oed:oecdec:432&r=eec |
| By: | Paul de Grauwe; Gunther Schnabl |
| Keywords: | Euro; EMU; EU-East-Central Europe; enlargement |
| Date: | 2004–10–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erp:euirsc:p0137&r=eec |
| By: | Michele Ca' Zorzi; Roberto A. De Santis |
| Keywords: | EMU; enlargement; East-Central Europe |
| Date: | 2004–11–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erp:euirsc:p0146&r=eec |
| By: | Massimiliano Mazzanti (University of Ferrara); Roberto Zoboli (CERIS-DSE, National Research Council of Italy) |
| Abstract: | The paper addresses the dynamic-incentive effect of environmental policy instruments when innovation is uncertain and occurs in very complex industrial subsystems. The case of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) is considered focusing predominantly on the effects of the European Directive adopted in 2000 which stipulated economic instruments as free take-back, and on the voluntary agreements in place in many EU countries. The ELV case study is an example of a framework where policy-making faces an intrinsic dynamic and systemic environment. Coherent sequences of single innovations taking place in both upstream (car making) and downstream (car recycling/recovery) of the ELV system can give rise to different “innovation paths”, in accordance with cost-benefit considerations, technological options and capabilities associated to the different industrial actors involved. The impact of economic instruments on innovation paths, in particular free take-back, is considered. Deficiencies or difficulties concerning the transmission of incentives between different industries can prevent the creation of new recycling/recovery/reuse markets, giving rise to other less preferable and unexpected outcomes. The implication for policy is a need for an integrated policy approach, as enforceable VAs, in order to create a shared interindustry interest for innovation and to reduce the possible adverse effects which economic instruments exert on innovation through cost benefit impacts on key industrial and waste-related agents involved in the ELV management system. These advantages should be taken into account vis à vis the emergence of Integrated Product Policy (IPP) as a leading concept of EU environmental policy and the associated shift from "extended producer responsibility" to "extended product responsibility". |
| Keywords: | ELV, Induced innovation, Dynamic efficiency, Economic instruments, Recycling |
| JEL: | L62 O13 O31 O38 |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2005.80&r=eec |
| By: | Stefano Breschi (CESPRI, Università Bocconi, Milano); Francesco Lissoni (CESPRI, Università Bocconi, Milano and University of Brescia, Italy); Fabio Montobbio (CESPRI, Università Bocconi, Milano and Università of Insubria, Varese, Italy) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the scientific productivity of Italian academic inventors, namely academic researchers designated as inventors on patent applications to the European Patent Office, 1978-1999. We use a new longitudinal data set comprising 299 academic inventors, and as many matching controls (non-patenting researchers). We enquire whether a trade-off between publishing and patenting, or a trade-off between basic and applied research exists, on the basis of the number and quality of publications. We find no trace of such a trade- off, and find instead a strong and positive relationship between patenting and publishing, even in basic science. Our results suggest however that it is not patenting per se that boosts scientific productivity, but the advantage derived from solid links with industry, as the strongest correlation between publishing and patenting activity is found when patents are owned by business partners, rather than individual scientists or their universities. |
| Keywords: | Scientific productivity; Academic inventors; University patenting |
| JEL: | O34 O31 |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cri:cespri:wp168&r=eec |
| By: | Kruse, Agneta (Department of Economics, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | Ageing puts a strain on most countries’ pension systems; forecasts show them to be more or less unsustainable. Evidence from social choice research, theoretical as well as empirical, does not seem to offer a way out of the dilemma, as the median voter will resist a reform. Despite this, Sweden has implemented a major reform, supposedly making the system sustainable. The question in this paper is thus: how was it possible to launch such a reform in Sweden? The analysis is based on majority voting models. Important explanatory factors are age structure as well as the age of the median voter; both of these go against the probability of a reform. A focus on age structure in combination with transitional rules and specific features of the reform may provide an explanation. |
| Keywords: | political economy; pension reform; median voter; age structure |
| JEL: | D72 H55 J26 |
| Date: | 2005–06–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2005_035&r=eec |
| By: | Ballester, Ramon |
| Abstract: | The paper aim is to analyse the influence of the European Employment Strategy (EES) in the implementation of the Spanish labour market policies. The first part of the paper describes the evolution and content of the EES. In the second one, the definition of activation is also explained. In addition to that, the ways how the EES develops and promotes active labour market policies are examined. The evolution of labour market policies in Spain and the current configuration of both active and passive policies are studied in the next three chapters. In these parts, the paper investigates to which extent the provisions of the EES have been implemented in Spain. The paper shows that: i) activation has been rising in the European countries since the implementation of the EES; ii) this fact has also happened in relative terms (comparing the evolution of active to passive policies); iii) Spain has been one of the countries which has led these processes; iv) the EES seems to have been influencing the configuration of some parts of the Spanish labour market policies. |
| Keywords: | activation; employment policies |
| JEL: | F15 J23 J24 J26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:udg:wpeudg:014&r=eec |