This paper measures the net redistributive impact of the EU budget. It finds that for every € 1,000 difference in income per capita across countries, € 9 is offset by lower contributions to the budget and € 3 is offset by higher expenditures by the budget. The overall equalising effect is...

The research project WWWforEurope undertakes to lie the theoretical and empirical foundations for the embarkment on a new socio-ecological growth path in Europe. The new path underlines the need to guarantee Welfare as a broad universal principle for its population, assuring economic and social...

This paper studies the impact of national fiscal rules on government size as measured by the ratio of government expenditures to gross domestic product. We develop a model of the budgetary process and show that a common pool problem may arise which can be mitigated through fiscal rules. We test...

Based on an extensive review of the academic and policy literature, this paper focuses on the role of managerial skills, workforce skills and business linkages in enhancing SME productivity. The paper is structured as follows. First, it presents estimates on productivity gaps by firm size to...

Direct public support for business R&D is a well-established remedy to market failures, yet empirical evidence on its effectiveness yields conflicting results. The paper investigates the impact of the first European public R&D grant program targeting small and medium enterprises (i.e. the SME...

We analyse the relationship between the composition of innovation partnerships and the potential of their innovations developed within EU-funded research projects under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7), the European Union's Research and Innovation...

Very little is known about the effectiveness of SME policies, and a careful look at the structure, mechanisms and incentives provided by these policies suggest caution in their implementation and, most importantly, the need to carefully and closely monitor their results. This paper relies on the...

The study investigates, by using econometric evaluation methods, how the usage of Finpro's (a public agency promoting internationalization of business) services impacts on the internationalization and performance of small and medium-sized firms in Finland. We measure internationalization and...

The expansion of enterprise level datasets has led to the emergence of a large body of literature on patterns of employment and job dynamics across different enterprise types. In the context of India, where MSMEs have been traditionally supported and encouraged by different policy initiatives to...

In this paper, a new approach to disclose the impact of politics on economic growth is presented: we use data derived from content analysis of party manifestos as measures of party preferences. In a panel of 23 OECD countries, we detect a positive impact of party support for various...