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This paper will compare and contrast Visegrád and Southeast European mobility towards (and away from) the European Union (EU) ideal of cohesion, in the process investigating conflicting "core" and "peripheral" assertions of "Europeanness." Though the Visegrád states have exceeded economic expectations, they have to varying degrees stood in opposition to the values of the EU's self-professed "European identity," with Hungary and Poland in particular demonstrating increasing illiberalism. Meanwhile, in Southeast Europe, lacklustre economic performance has tended to contrast with increasingly liberal democratic rule and strong popular support for the EU "project." The EU's cohesion strategy has prioritized economic convergence and, ultimately, this has meant that budgetary considerations, and political rhetoric and scrutiny, have often favoured the rebellious but economically resurgent Visegrád states over the weaker economies of a more compliant Southeast Europe. The EU's integration strategy of constructing "identity hegemony" depends upon both economic and socio-political convergence. This paper questions the congruence of these focuses, given the discriminatory application of integration incentives and the persistence of Orientalism/Balkanism in West European rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic indicators are essential for policy making. In transition economies and in Russia in particular, both the quality of data and their comparability are subject to criticism, This phenomenon is particularly observable for the Kaliningrad region, which is currently at the centre of discussions between the European Union and the Russian Federation. At present, many observers and policy makers are dissatisfied with the existing figures. The objective of this paper is to fill part of the gap and to give an economic image of the Russian enclave, on the basis of five years of fieldwork. We concentrate on the assessment of Kaliningrad's trading openness and its economic development level. In a first section, we reassess the trading position of the region taking into account its geographical location. Second, we give an appraisal of the unrecorded economy of the enclave and reassess regional production. Finally, we make Gross Regional Product comparable with other countries and reassess the region's GRP in purchasing power parity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving energy efficiency quickly is key to mitigating climate change and requires improvements implemented in firms. As these require upfront investments, good access to external finance is important. Theory suggests that information asymmetries may prevent lenders from including energy efficiency into their lending assessment, even though higher energy efficiency increases firm cost-competitiveness and its collateral value. Empirically, little is known about the impact of energy efficiency on access to external finance. For the first time, we examine empirically the effect of a firm's higher energy efficiency on their ability to obtain loans in European Union countries by exploiting a unique firm-level dataset. We find that energy efficiency has no effect on the ability of a firm to obtain external financing compared to other indicators on the financial or operational health of the firm. The results reveal an unexploited potential for energy efficiency policy to signal when firms are energy efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on issues concerning industrial clusters. Arguably, one of the bigger academic as well as policy hypes for almost a decade now is the issue of industrial clusters. Recent years have witnessed an explosion of studies of institutions and social embeddedness in clusters, connected to, for instance, the literatures on regional milieux. The result of change of clusters can be measured in terms of changes in their turnover or exports of their companies, or regional GDP, employment rates, or living standards. However, while policy bodies such as the OECD and European Union work hard in order to compensate for regional inequalities resulting from the change of cluster dynamics, scholars need to dig deeper and focus upon changes in the structures of clusters in order to understand their rise, decline or shift.

This article employs a panel data econometric approach in order to empirically ascertain the role of the phenomenon of financialization in the deceleration of labor productivity in the European Union countries from 1980 to 2019. During that time, the European Union countries suffered a huge structural transformation based on Reaganomics and Thatcherism and their financial systems have experienced strong liberalization and deregulation, which have contributed to poor evolution of labor productivity and have revived fears around a new "secular stagnation" in the era of financialization. Grounded in post-Keynesian literature, the slowdown of labor productivity in the majority of developed economies in the last decades cannot be separated from the phenomenon of financialization, which has occurred through four different channels, namely, weak economic performance, the decline in the labor income share, the increase in personal income inequality, and the strengthening of the degree of financialization and its corresponding harmful effects on innovation, research and development, technological progress, and productive investments performed by nonfinancial corporations. Our findings confirm that lagged labor productivity, economic performance, and labor income share have a positive impact on labor productivity in the European Union countries, while personal income inequality and the degree of financialization impact it negatively. Our findings also reveal that labor productivity in the European Union countries in the last decades would have grown more if there had been a stronger economic performance, a smaller decline (or even a rise) of the labor income share, a smaller increase (or even a decrease) of personal income inequality, and a weakening of the degree of financialization. JEL Classification: C23, E12, E24, and E44 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the global trend of total factor productivity, efficiency, and technological change in the European Union regions over the period 1986-2004, using the Malmquist index computed by data envelopment analysis. The results reveal the important role played by technical efficiency in explaining total factor productivity growth in the European Union. For this reason, in a second stage, we investigate existing regional disparities in efficiency levels across the European regions, using a nonparametric methodology that allows us to study the dynamics of the entire cross-sectional distribution. Estimates show the presence of a process of convergence in efficiency levels over the sample period, despite a relatively low degree of intradistribution mobility. In order to complete these results, factors such as the geographical location of the various regions, country-specific characteristics, or the sectoral composition of economic activity were examined for their role in explaining the observed disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the distribution of income inequality among the regions of the European Union from 1993 to 2000. The results obtained show that the levels of inequality vary considerably between regions. Nevertheless, we have detected a high level of positive spatial dependence in the distribution under consideration. However, 57% of the regions considered registered no statistically significant variations in the degree of income dispersion over time, though there was a reduction in 40% of them. The empirical evidence presented indicates the existence of a process of regional convergence in terms of inequality during the period considered, mainly as a result of the evolution of regions whose initial levels of inequality were relatively high. Moreover, our analysis highlights the important roles played by the national component, activity, and unemployment rates, gross domestic product per capita, and the weight of the agricultural sector in total employment in accounting for differences in the degree of income dispersion across the European regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we challenge the ability of the conventional methods initiated by Barro and Sala-i-Martin in the early 1990s to detect actual convergence or divergence trends across countries or regions and suggest an alternative dynamic framework of analysis, which allows for a better understanding of the forces in operation. With the use of a SURE model and time-series data for eight European Union (EU) member states, we test directly for the validity of two competing hypotheses: the neoclassical (NC) convergence hypothesis originating in the work of Solow and the cumulative causation hypothesis stemming from Myrdal's theories. We also account for changes in the external environment, such as the role of European integration on the level of regional disparities. Our findings indicate that both shod-term divergence and long-term convergence processes coexist. Regional disparities are reported to follow a procyclical pattern, as dynamic and developed regions grow faster in periods of expansion and slower in periods of recession. At the same time, significant spread effects are also in operation, partly offsetting the cumulative impact of growth on space. Similar results are obtained from the estimation of an intra-EU model of disparities at the national level, indicating that the forces in operation are independent of the level of aggregation. Our findings challenge the view of economic growth as the main driver for a reduction of regional disparities and contribute to the growing scientific evidence that points towards the need to rethink current EU-wide regional development policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides a longitudinal, cross-national account of the relationship between negative news coverage and consumer confidence across all twenty-eight European Union (EU) member states for the period 2005-2017. We rely on an extensive data set of international news agency coverage and a range of economic indicators retrieved from Eurostat. Employing fixed-effects pooled time series and multilevel models, we demonstrate that negative news coverage is negatively associated with consumer confidence, generally. Confirming our hypotheses grounded in media system dependency theory, more specifically, this association was stronger for the sociotropic attribute of consumer confidence than its egocentric attribute. Moreover, the association weakened under circumstances where unemployment was rising as well as in those countries that faced the most severe consequences of the financial crisis. Altogether, news coverage matters especially when people are affected less directly by the consequences of economic downturn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic issues have been a major concern for Europeans in the last few years. In this context, it is reasonable to suppose that people are aware of the main economic figures regarding Europe. But are they really familiar with them? Do they know what the rates of growth, unemployment and inflation are?. The aim of this article is to explore the level of knowledge of these three economic indicators among Europeans. Several regression models are specified and estimated in order to identify the relationship between an individual's knowledge and their socioeconomic profile, use of the Internet, perceived importance of economic issues and official statistics and trust in them. Cross-country differences are also assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development (SD) is now a broad policy objective in the European Union (EU).This article explores how the contribution to SD of the EU Structural Funds (SFs) might be evaluated. It suggests the use of a 'four-capitals model' of SD, and outlines how commonly accepted principles and dimensions of sustainability might be interpreted within such a model. The article then reviews various approaches to SD indicators, concluding that an indicator framework is preferable to the various methods of aggregation of indicators that have been proposed. It then relates the indicator issue to the framework for evaluation of the SFs set out by the European Commission. Out of this discussion an illustrative indicator set for such an evaluation, related to the four-capitals model of SD, is derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]