Simple but serious books have an important role to play. So Krugman’s book on ‘depression’ is very welcome. The emphasis of this book is on unemployment (and distribution more generally, including high compensation for finance ‘experts’). The analysis is...

Following the decision to abolish the Regional Development Agencies in England by the newly elected Coalition Government in 2010, Local Enterprise Partnerships were introduced to drive economic development at a local level. However, the limited government prescription as to both the form and...

Having reached a peak in 2002, Croatia's GDP growth lost momentum thereafter due to restrictive economic policy measures prompted by rising external and internal imbalances. The current account deficits, averaging 6-7% of the country's GDP over the past few years, were primarily the consequence...

One of the aims of the internationally funded Investment Compact of the Balkan Stability Pact is to reduce investment risk in the region and lay the foundations for the inflow of private capital. This paper discusses the situation of foreign direct investment (FDI) in South-East European...

Recent developments have revealed that (i) advanced transition countries have received most of the FDI to date, especially greenfield projects; (ii) more countries than in the mid?1990s are resorting to FDI in order to accelerate privatization (Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia); and (iii)...

The report gives an overview of the overall trends in output and employment in Croatia, and of the country's fiscal and external sectors. It concentrates in more detail on the manufacturing sector and its competitiveness in comparison with developments in other Central, East and Southeast...

This paper follows the definition of international competitiveness of countries (nations) as defined by Trabold (1995) including the ability to sell, the ability to attract FDI and the ability to adjust - all these leading to the ability to earn. These components can be measured by specific...

Purpose – Perfect competition (PC), despite its abstract nature, is central to the literature on shadow prices and remains an important benchmark in economic policy analysis. Adding sustainability to the conditions of PC, results in a meaningful benchmark, especially in the context of pursuing...

We analyze the effects of corruption and institutional quality on the quality of business regulation. Our key findings indicate that corruption negatively affects the quality of regulation and that general institutional quality is insignificant once corruption is controlled for. These findings...

Purpose – Measures of inequality determine the effectiveness of social and economic policies aimed at reducing inequality and to design effective intervention policies. The purpose of this paper is to focus on poverty reduction and welfare improving impacts of reducing income inequality in the...