For years the economics profession has been puzzled by one of the most perplexing economic problems - the overall slowdown in the growth rate of labour productivity since 1973. Not only was the deceleration a worldwide trend, the growth of productivity also turned out to be markedly slower in...

Economists agree at least on this: it is difficult to find evidence for, or merely to imagine any growth mechanism that does not work through the increase of a stock of capital in one way or another. From a more policy point of view - in particular in terms of the debate of economic development...

It is not so long ago that policy makers thought that excessive regional disparities would disappear automatically in the long run. Arbitrage possibilities arising from competition and factor mobility were expected to induce a more than average growth performance in lagging regions. Having the...

Introducing this volume of the EIB Papers and linking the various contributions, this paper emphasises that the internationalisation of production in Europe, which creates cross-border production networks, is an increasingly important element of globalisation, has been spreading to new EU...

Focussing on Europe, this paper starts with reviewing the main determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI); a key observation is that economic policies and non-policy factors contribute equally to the direction of FDI flows. The paper then examines the growth-FDI nexus: while a strong...

Drawing on the OECD's structural analysis (STAN) database, this paper contributes to the understanding of European economic growth through a decomposition into employment and productivity, across sectors, and across different time periods and countries. The US productivity surge from the...