This paper studies inflation persistence with time-varying coefficient autoregressions for twelve central European countries,in comparison with the United States and the euro area. Inflation persistence tends to be higher in times of high inflation. Since the oil price shocks, inflation...

This paper provides new evidence about the budgetary consequences â?? for patent offices â?? of the coexistence of the forthcoming Unitary Patent (UP) with the current European Patent (EP). Simulation results illustrate a dilemma between (1) high UP renewal fees to ensure enough financial...

The faltering Doha round has led to a renewed focus on large regional trade agreements. There are two super-RTAs in the making in the Asia-Pacific and one in the Atlantic, all with rather ambitious negotiation targets, and presented as alternate means to reset global trade rules and take the...

Japan is the most rapidly aging country in the world. This is evidence that the social security system, which consists of the pension system, healthcare system and other programmes, has been working well. The population is shrinking because of a falling birth rate. It is expected that the...

â?¢ The single market is often perceived as the panacea for Europeâ??s economic troubles. It is believed that completing the single market would boost welfare, stimulate growth and increase European competitiveness. â?¢ However, identifying and quantifying the channels through which market...

The euro areaâ??s political contract requires member nations to rely principally on their own resources when confronted with severe economic distress. Since monetary policy is the same for all, national fiscal austerity is the default response to counter national fiscal stress. Moreover, the...

The need for innovation, coupled with the pervading role of services in advanced economies, requires a broader understanding of innovation that better captures the multi-dimensional role of services in innovation. In this paper, we consider ‘service innovation’ as any innovation...

<em>This paper is co-authored by Črt Kostevc, University of Ljubljana, and Institute for Economic Research (IER); and Metka Stare, Institute of Economic Research (IER) and University of Ljubljana.</em> The paper investigates the dual effect of innovation on employment and skill...

<em>This post is co-authored by <a href="http://simpatic.eu/author/rene-belderbos/" target="_blank">Rene Belderbos</a>, KU leuven.</em> It is well established in the literature that there are intra- and inter-sectoral knowledge spillovers, which are national and cross-border, and mean that the social rate of return from R&D exceeds the private rate of return. It is essential...

After an introduction to the social innovation concept (Chapter 1), the working paper presents four perspectives of social innovation: <ul> <li>The macro-perspective of social transformation towards a global knowledge society (Chapter 2)</li> <li>The work/organizations change perspective: social technologies are...</li></ul>