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-economics, most notably in recent years regarding the economic integration processes in Europe and the global economy. In his years as professor at La Sapienza University in Rome, combined with his Visiting Chair at LBS, Mario focused on wide-ranging issues
The productivity slowdown in European countries is among the major stylised facts of the last two decades. Several explanations have been proposed: some focus on demand-side effects, working through Kaldor’s second law of economic growth (also known as Verdoorn’s law), others on supply-side effects determined by a misallocation of the factors of production, caused either by labour market reforms or by perverse effects of financial integration (in Europe, related to the adoption of the euro). The latter explanation is put forward by some recent studies that stress how low interest rates brought about by the monetary union may have lowered productivity by inducing capital misallocation. The aim of this paper is to investigate the robustness of the latter empirical findings and to compare them with the alternative explanation offered by the post-Keynesian growth model, which instead emphasises the relation between foreign trade and productivity, along lines that go back to Adam Smith. To do so, we use a panel of industry-level data extracted from the EU KLEMS database, comparing these alternative explanations by panel cointegration techniques. The results shed some light on the role played by the single currency in the structural divergences among euro area member countries.
Az írás a globalizáció fogalmát, történeti és jelen fejlődési irányait tárgyalja. Bemutatja az ipari forradalom nyomán felgyorsuló fejlődését, megtorpanását a világháborúk időszakában, és a háború utáni fellendülését. A mai globalizációt a technológiai változások, a neoliberális politikai fordulat és a digitális forradalom összefüggésében vizsgálja. Felvázolja a globalizációhoz való eltérő viszonyulásokat, az általa előidézett társadalmi konfliktusokra való reagálás alapján. A 2008–2009-es pénzügyi világválság, a Covid-járvány és a fenyegető klímaválság a globalizáció lassulásához vezet. A globalizáció korrekciójára irányuló politikai nyomás és a 4. ipari forradalom technológiai változásai a deglobalizáció új hullámát vetítik előre. A globalizáció azonban folytatódik a digitális térben, és az új regionalizmus is megőrzi a globalizációs folyamat vívmányait.
1 Introduction The free movement of labour is one of the four freedoms that constitute the key elements of European economic integration. Recently, worker mobility has been under attack in several countries
In the early and mid-2000s, the prospect of EU accession and the global boom facilitated rapid economic recovery and boosted economic and institutional reforms in the Western Balkan region. The global financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the European crisis of 2010–2013 slowed the pace of economic growth and amplified high unemployment in the region. In addition, various unresolved legacies from past conflicts slowed the pace of reform and progress towards EU accession.
The European Commission’s February 2018 communication sets an indicative deadline (2025) for the two most advanced candidates – Serbia’s and Montenegro’s admission to the EU. This could incentivise all Western Balkan countries, including those candidates that have not yet started membership negotiations (Macedonia and Albania) and those waiting for candidate status (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo), to remove domestic political obstacles to EU accession, solve conflicts with neighbours, speed up reforms and accelerate economic growth.
Balassa, B. (ed.) (1975): European Economic Integration. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company. European Economic Integration
The subject of the paper is the analysis of price convergence in the European Union in general and in the Central and Eastern European member states in particular. The first part of the paper is an overview of the relevant literature on price convergence serving as the theoretical foundation of the subsequent empirical analyses on comparative price levels. The second part discusses sigma convergence in the EU-27 including the old (EU-15) and the new (EU-12) member states, as well as within the Economic and Monetary Union. Conditional (weak) beta convergence in the EU-12 is also analyzed. The first conclusion of the paper is that a rather strong relationship exists between sigma convergence and the process of economic integration, more precisely between sigma convergence and the establishment of the individual stages of regional economic associations. The second conclusion is that price convergence is not a secular process; it may be impeded or accelerated by a great number of micro and macroeconomic factors.
Europe and its southern neighbors
Interdependence, security and economic development in contemporary EU-MENA relations
The paper analyzes European Union – Middle East and North Africa (EU-MENA) relations from the perspective of complex interdependencies. As a theoretical framework, it outlines the application of Barry Buzan’s Security Complex Theory on the Euro-Mediterranean (or EU-MENA) region-pair. This involves the provision of a general overview on the several sectors of interdependence between the two regions, namely the military, political, economic, societal and environmental sectors. The paper then turns towards the deeper elaboration of the economic sector and identifies it as the most potent sector for European activism, where the Union could work most effectively on building a long-term solution for the stabilization of the MENA. As conclusions, the paper argues for a deeper economic integration between the two regions, which would provide opportunities for the MENA’s population to be economically successful “at home”, therefore reducing not only the highly visible migration pressure on the EU, but also other security threats such as civil wars, organized crime and weapon proliferation.
The free movement of persons has been one of the fundamental building blocks of European integration from the beginning. The economics behind it implies that greater efficiency can be achieved if besides goods and services, the factors of production (i.e. capital and labour) can also move freely across a common market. Nevertheless, this setup was originally designed for an economic area where internal imbalances were modest. In fact, these freedoms have serious, originally unintended consequences in the 21st-century European Union (EU) where the original condition, even if implicit at that time, no longer applies. Nicholas Kaldor had actually warned about these threats many decades ago, saying that with the development of trade, initial differences among trading regions would grow in the absence of adequate compensating policies. Most lately, two large-scale events have accelerated intra-EU divergence and, consequently, migration: the Eastern enlargements and the recent financial and economic crisis. Our study focuses on the causes and potential implications of the intra-EU migration challenge in the light of Kaldor’s legacy. Our main conclusion is that the original construct of European economic integration is not fit for the current realities in that it no longer ensures steady and balanced development across the EU.
Truman, E. M. (1975): The Effects of European Economic Integration on the Production and Trade of Manufactured Products. In Balassa, B. (ed.): European Economic Integration. Amsterdam: North Holland, pp. 3
