What determines a country's ability to compete in international markets? What fosters the global competitiveness of its firms? And in the European context, have key elements of the EU strategy such as EMU and enlargement helped or hindered domestic firms' competitiveness in local and global...

Overall, the paper underlines the difficulties in spelling out the transmission and the final effects of external shocks on the euro area, and highlights the complexity of the various direct and indirect mechanisms. We describe the main channels by which potential spillovers from external...