Policy frameworks of the IMF, the World Bank, and the EU are discussed in order to come up with criteria of macroeconomic and financial stability and sustainability for Future Member States of the EU (candidate and potential candidate countries). The key deficiency of the EU policy framework is that it lacks a short-term stabilization policy model and instruments for adjustment, such as the IMF. It also lacks an appropriate model for investment support, though not necessarily the funds if not the instruments. The paper suggests a set of criteria for surveillance....more

The main objectives of this study are the assessment of activation policies in the Western Balkan countries in the light of the EU policy frameworks and the capacity and effectiveness of the Public Employment Services (PES) to implement modern labour market services. The general strategy of the research is to examine the existing activation policies against the background of labour market developments in the Western Balkan countries. In a further step the study identifies opportunities for regional cooperation among the individual countries of the region. ...more

Supply-demand imbalanced drive food prices (by Zdenek Lukas; pp. 1-6) Keywords: agricultural production, food supply and demand, food prices, inflation Countries covered: EU, New EU Member States Topics: Sectoral studies; Macroeconomic Analysis and Policy The gas and electricity sectors of the Western Balkan countries (by Vasily Astrov and Doris Hanzl-Weiss; pp. 7-12) Keywords: electricity sector, gas sector Countries covered: SEE Topics: Sectoral Studies; Regional Development Recent problems with private pension funds in Poland (by Lech Keller-Krawczyk; pp. 13-16) Keywords: pe...more

Romanian SMEs can directly benefit from the Sectoral Operational Programme ‘Increase of Economic Competitiveness’ (SOP IEC) and some parts of the Regional Operational Programme (ROP) in the period 2007 2013. Research commissioned by the Directorate General for Regional Policy of the European Commission made a strategic evaluation of SMEs’ experience with these support programmes and their needs for support in general. This paper is the summary of the final report of the project carried out in the first half of 2010. In the context of the research underlying this paper, a standardized sur...more

Cohesion policy - does it have a future? (by S. Richter; pp. 1-2) The great crisis and the American response (by J. K. Galbraith; pp. 3-11) Export-led growth and trade among developing countries: tendencies and prospects (by O. Havrylyshyn, pp. 12-17) Statistical Annex: Selected monthly data on the economic situation in Central and Eastern Europe (pp. 19-26) Guide to wiiw statistical services on Central, East and Southeast Europe, Russia and Ukraine (p. 27) ...more

We use Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to evaluate the robustness of determinants of economic growth in a new dataset of 255 European regions in the period 1995-2005. We use three different specifications based on (i) the cross-section of regions, (ii) the cross-section of regions with country fixed effects, and (iii) the cross-section of regions with a spatial autoregressive (SAR) structure. Our results indicate that the income convergence process between countries is dominated by the catching-up process of regions in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), whereas convergence within countries is mo...more

This paper uses the adaptive Lasso estimator to determine the variables important for economic growth. The adaptive Lasso estimator is a computationally very simple procedure that can perform at the same time model selection and consistent parameter estimation. The methodology is applied to three data sets, the data used in Sala-i-Martin et al. (2004), in Fernandez et al. (2001) and a data set for the regions in the European Union. The results for the former two data sets are similar in several respects to those found in the published papers, yet are obtained at a negligible fraction of comput...more

In this paper we extend the agglomeration model of Ciccone (2002) to the level of industry. We then test this model using panel data for six sectors on regional level data for 27 EU member states. Our results for the aggregate economy confirm the estimates of Ciccone (2002). For our full sample of countries the sectoral level results also indicate significant agglomeration effects, with the exception of agriculture. Considering differences in the extent of agglomeration effects between new and old EU member states, however, leads to the conclusion that agglomeration effects tend to be stronger...more