Green Public Procurement: A Neglected Tool in the European Green Deal Toolbox?

Intereconomics - Public procurement amounts to around 14% of European Union GDP and, given this size, could well represent an important tool to foster the green transition. However, green public...     

Crisis of the euro zone and prospects of the euro

This paper analyzes problems of the eurozone, which are aggravated by the crisis. It proposes architectural transformations of the European monetary system targeted at combating the crisis and promoting economic growth and employment in today’s structurally inhomogeneous Europe.     

The EMU’s Twisted Foundations: How to Use and Misuse Economic Theory

The creation of common European currency is the most ambitious institutional project of the European Union for decades. The idea of launching this kind of currency has merits. However, the implementation of this idea has already led to very negative consequences, as political considerations had priority over economic ones. The article shows how theoretical approaches to common currencies have been evolving since 1960s and why misuse of economic theory provokes inevitable collapse of the European monetary union.     

What should the inflation rate be? (On the importance of a long-standing discussion for defining today’s development strategy for Russia)

This article sets out to demonstrate that every economy at a specific time has its inherent, quite definite, rate of inflation. Inflation rates may vary widely depending on economic situation and should be estimated in a dynamic perspective. They include a component associated with the degree of transformation of production facilities, which determines the “normal” rate of inflation. Another component, reflecting the influence of extra investment, which may prove necessary to compensate for the previous period of decapitalization of the Russian economy, varies through the investment cycle. This makes it possible to forecast inflation fluctuations around the “normal” rate; their recognition should be the basis for establishing a socially and politically acceptable rate of inflation within a particular development strategy.     

Economic reform and migration in Yugoslavia: an econometric model

"The paper analyzes the impact of external migration on the Yugoslav economy during the period 1965-1972. This is done by means of a macroeconometric model embodying various dualistic characteristics of Yugoslavia. A counterfactual simulation of the model is used to judge the impact of external migration. According to the indicators utilized, the simulation suggests that migration has been beneficial to Yugoslavia."     

Beyond the WTO? An Anatomy of EU and US Preferential Trade Agreements

It is often alleged that PTAs involving the EC and the US include a significant number of obligations in areas not currently covered by the WTO Agreement, such as investment protection, competition policy, labour standards and environmental protection. The primary purpose of this study is to highlight the extent to which these claims are true. The study divides the contents of all PTAs involving the EC and the US currently notified to the WTO, into 14 ‘WTO+’ and 38 ‘WTO‐X’ areas, where WTO+ provisions come under the current mandate of the WTO, and WTO‐X provisions deal with issues lying outside the current WTO mandate. As a second step, the legal enforceability of each obligation is evaluated, and judged on the extent to which the text specifies clear obligations. Among the findings are: (i) EC agreements contain almost four times as many instances of WTO‐X provisions as do US agreements; (ii) but EC agreements evidence a very significant amount of ‘legal inflation’ (i.e. non‐legally enforceable provisions) in the WTO‐X category, and US agreements actually contain more enforceable WTO‐X provisions than do the EC agreements; (iii) US agreements tend to emphasise regulatory areas more compared to EC agreements.     

The political economy of services trade liberalization: a case for international regulatory cooperation?

Little progress has been made since the creation of the WTOon expanding and deepening the coverage of services liberalizationcommitments. This paper identifies and discusses five hypothesesthat may explain the absence of dynamism: (i) technologicalchanges allowing ever more services to be traded cross-borderunaffected by policy; (ii) strong incentives to pursue liberalizationon an autonomous basis (unilaterally); (iii) perceptions thatbilateral or regional cooperation are a good substitute forthe WTO; (iv) standard political-economy factors, such as adjustmentcosts and resistance by incumbents to erosion of rents; and(v) concerns that the WTO will affect the ability of regulatorsto enforce national norms. We argue that all of these explanationsplay a role, and that some of these factors significantly impedethe scope for reciprocal exchanges of ‘concessions’—theengine of WTO negotiations.     

The effects of Europe’s internal market program on production and trade: A first assessment

The Effects of Europe’s Internal Market Program on Production and Trade: A First Assessment. — The paper analyzes the extent of structural changes that have occurred inside the EC since the launching of the internal market program. The first part of the paper examines intersectoral shifts in the pattern of specialization within EC manufacturing and finds relatively little change from 1986 to 1992. The second analyzes the trade impact of the internal market program, and finds that internal and external trade creation have both prevailed. The third uses regression analysis to explain the share of intra-EC imports in total EC imports in 1986 and in 1992, and identifies the impact of the internal market program.     

Ukraine and the EU: Enlargement at a New Crossroads

Intereconomics - Joining the EU requires not only that candidate countries fulfil a certain number of conditions, but also that EU countries feel ready to welcome new members.