The third stage of the Economic and Monetary Union will start on January 1st, 1999, at which point the currencies of the participating countries will be irrevocably fixed as the prelude to the introduction of the euro by 2002. Although the European System of Central Banks’ objective is...

The third stage of the Economic and Monetary Union will start on January 1st, 1999, at which point the currencies of the participating countries will be irrevocably fixed as the prelude to the introduction of the euro by 2002. Although the European System of Central Banks’ objective is...

This paper presents empirical evidence on the competitive structure in the banking industry in the EU as a whole as well as in individual EU countries. The study is based on a non-structural estimation technique to evaluate the elasticity of total interest revenues with respect to changes in...

This paper studies the design, effects and interactions of monetary and fiscal policies in the euro-area and between the euro-area and the non euro-area. To do so, a stylized three-country model of monetary and fiscal policy rules is constructed. It is analyzed how monetary and fiscal rules...

With the completion of EMU, tax competition and, more in general, locational competition is high on the EU policy agenda. In contrast to the standard neo-classical reasoning, recent advances in the theory of trade and location have shown that tax competition does not necessarily lead to a 'race...

We construct a unique data set to analyze whether or not a large temporary shock had an impact on German city growth and city size distribution. Following recent work by Davis and Weinstein (2001) on Japan, we take the strategic bombing of German cities during WWII as our example of such a...

Recent studies of border effects have focused on the intra-country and inter-country comparison of trade flows. It is found that borders have a negative impact on the size of cross-border trade. In order to estimate border effects on a regional level one needs not only data on inter-country but...

Stimulating firms to become exporters is of interest to policy makers, as exporters are in general more productive than non-exporters. However, selecting high export potentials is difficult in practice. The contribution of this paper is to characterize and identify these (high) export...

The United Kingdom has opted to leave the European Union. The trade and welfare consequences of this decision are large; most studies predict a trade and welfare loss for both the UK and the EU. The UK parliament has indicated that it aims for new and ambitious trade agreements following Brexit,...