This paper describes long-term trends in public investment and analyses their causes and consequences. This has been undertaken separately for the EU-15 and the new member countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition, it assesses the significance of infrastructure finance through...

Investment in network infrastructure can boost long-term economic growth in OECD countries. Moreover, infrastructure investment can have a positive effect on growth that goes beyond the effect of the capital stock because of economies of scale, the existence of network externalities competition...

The economic effects of environmental policies are of central interest to policymakers. The traditional approach sees environmental policies as a burden on economic activity, at least in the short to medium term, as they raise costs without increasing output and restrict the set of production...

This book highlights the achievements and challenges of the ongoing process of financial integration in Europe.   This unique collection will be of great interest to economists and experts in the fields of financial markets and European integration from central, commercial and investment...

How can public policy influence investment in infrastructure in network industries? Network industries rely mainly on fixed networks to deliver services, with investment being lumpy and largely irreversible. As a result, public policies – such as public provision, the introduction of...

Eastward enlargement of the Eurozone will result in transition economies sharing a currency with well-established market economies. We compare the suitability of the candidates relative to current members at a similar time before joining, as well as their readiness to comply with Maastricht...

This paper evaluates the usefulness of business sentiment indicators for forecasting developments in the Chinese real economy. We use data on diffusion indices collected by the People's Bank of China for forecasting industrial production, retail sales and exports. Our bivariate vector...

Some observers argue that increased real integration has led to greater co-movement of prices internationally. We examine the evidence for cross-border price spillovers among economies participating in the pan-Asian cross-border production networks. Starting with country-level data, we find that...