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This article presents an overview of this issue in relation to the periodical's twentieth anniversary. The author discusses the organization of a anniversary panel in London, England to mark the occasion, and to review articles from the history of the periodical focusing on economic-policy development during these 20 years. The article also provides an introduction to other articles presented in this issue, including one concerning the evolution of exchange-rate management, the effects of government debts on interest rates, and higher education reform in Europe.

This paper examines the nexus between political instability and economic growth in 10 CEE countries in transition in the period 1990-2009. Our results support the contention that political instability defined as a propensity for government change had a negative impact on growth. On the other hand, there was no causality in the opposite direction. A sensitivity analysis based on the application of a few hundred different variants of the initial econometric model confirmed the abovementioned findings only in the case where major government changes were applied to the definition of political instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses whether hosting the most prestigious European cultural event, the European Capital of Culture, has an impact on regional economic development and the life satisfaction of the local population. We show that European Capitals are hosted in regions with above-average GDP per capita, but do not causally affect the economic development in a significant way. Surprisingly, using difference-in-difference estimations, a negative effect on the wellbeing of the regional population is found during the event. Since no effect is found before the event, reverse causality and positive anticipation can be ruled out. The negative effect during the event might result from dissatisfaction with the high levels of public expenditure, transport disruptions, general overcrowding or an increase in housing prices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent advances in the urban science make broad use of the notion of scaling. We focus here on the important scaling relationship between the gross metropolitan product (GMP) of a city and its population (pop). It has been demonstrated that GMP ∝ Y Ypopβ with β always greater than 1 and close to 1.2. This fundamental finding highlights a universal rule that holds across countries and cultures and might explain the very nature of cities. However, in an increasingly connected world, the hypothesis that the economy of a city solely depends on its population might be questionable. Using data for 248 cities in the European Union between 2005 and 2010, we found a double GMP/pop scaling regime. For West EU cities, β = 1 over the whole the period, while for post-communist cities β > 1 and increases from ∼1.2 to ∼1.4. The evolution of the scaling exponent describes the convergence of post-communist European cities to open and liberal economies. We propose a simple model of economic convergence in which, under stable political conditions, a linear GMP/pop scaling is expected for all cities. The results suggest that the GMP/pop super-linear scaling represents a phase of economic growth rather than a steady, universal urban feature. The results also suggest that relationships between cities are embedded in their political and economic context and cannot be neglected in explanations of cities, urbanization and urban economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world economy is facing a variety of financial and economic challenges caused by different economic and political crises. Furthermore, the crises have had a negative impact that has been reflected on the macroeconomic indicators of each national economy. In these circumstances the transition economies, especially the Western Balkan countries needed to cope with the ever growing international competition, increasing unemployment, lack of private initiatives and investments, low level of economic growth and development. As a result, the attention is oriented towards SMEs, the importance of SMEs as a key pillar to sustainable growth and competitiveness on national and global market. The focus of this research is the importance of various contemporary forms which support entrepreneurship in order to increase investments, such as: business start-up centres, clusters, business incubators, economic zones and investment funds. The main objective of this research is to determine and measure the relationship between the SMEs from Polog region and contemporary institutions: business development centre (BDC) and technology park (TP) at SEE University, Enterprise Support Agency (ESA) as a private company and economic chamber of Macedonia which support private initiatives and increase their investments. In order to determine the relationship, a survey on SMEs in Polog region is conducted. The methodology used is cross tabulation two-way tables with measures of association based on data analysis from surveys and processed by STATA software. The main finding of this research is the positive impact of BDC, ESA and economic chamber on Polog region SMEs on the increase of their investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article scrutinizes the recently postulated link between the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) and economic success. Multivariate analysis of 4,705 demographic observations, covering women's marriage age, female lifetime celibacy, and household complexity in 39 European countries, shows that the most extreme manifestations of the EMP were associated with economic stagnation rather than growth. There is no evidence that the EMP improved economic performance by empowering women, increasing human capital investment, adjusting population to economic trends, or sustaining beneficial cultural norms. European economic success was not caused by the EMP and its sources must therefore be sought in other factors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Examines causes of economic reform failures in Southeast Europe. Interaction that led to institutional change; Policy challenges faced by post-communist countries; Details on the economic construction and reforms in the Balkans.