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According to Harvey (1988) , the forecasting ability of the term spread on economic growth is due to the fact that interest rates reflect investors' expectations about the future economic situation when deciding their plans for consumption and investment. Past literature has used ex post data on output or consumption growth as proxies for their expected value. In this paper, we employ a direct measure of economic agents' expectations, the Economic Sentiment Indicator elaborated by the European Commission, to test this hypothesis. Our results indicate that a linear combination of European yield spreads explains a surprising 93.7\% of the variability of the Economic Sentiment Indicator. This ability of yield spreads to capture economic agent expectations may be the actual reason for the predictive power of yield spreads about future business cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of the literature on fiscal decentralization has tended to stress that the greater capacity of decentralized governments to tailor policies to local preferences and to be innovative in the provision of policies and public services, the greater the potential for economic efficiency and growth. There is, however, little empirical evidence to substantiate this claim. In this paper we examine, using a panel data approach with dynamic effects, the relationship between the level of fiscal decentralization and economic growth rates across 16 Central and Eastern European countries over the 1990–2004 period. Our findings suggest that, contrary to the majority view, there is a significant negative relationship between two out of three fiscal decentralization indicators included in the analysis and economic growth. However, the use of different time lags allows us to nuance this negative view and show that long-term effects vary depending on the type of decentralization undertaken in each of the countries considered. While expenditure at and transfers to sub-national tiers of government are negatively correlated with economic growth, taxes assigned at the sub-national level evolve from having a significantly negative to a significantly positive correlation with the national growth rate. This supports the view that sub-national governments with their own revenue source respond better to local demands and promote greater economic efficiency [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents documentation of several books and papers related to the regional growth of Europe. "European Yearbook," A record of European organization and integration compiled under the auspices of the Council of Europe. Regional Development, Economic Growth And Employment in France. A discussion of the excessive concentration of industry around the cities, particularly Paris, of the effects this concentration is having on the nation's economy, and of what may be done to change the trend. "Continental France," Facts and figures on the political and economic state of France with some information on foreign trade and special inducements for foreign investors.

The practice so far has indicated that there is a sensitive relationship that exists between social and economic subsystem of sustainable development, therefore this research suggests comparison of the states of these two subsystems as a new conceptual frame which is essential for strategic conceptualization of development. The research pointed out a rather visible collision between the achieved degree of economic and social development in the countries of South Eastern Europe in respect to Germany and France, which were taken into consideration as two of the most developed countries in the European Union and in the entire world. The indicators which are given in this research point to the necessity of further scientific and practical consideration of strategic conceptualization of relationship between economics and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses on the measure used to gauge poverty in the U.S., Europe and other developing countries. It discusses that the present official measure of poverty in the U.S. is flawed and both, the poverty threshold and measurement of available resources should be improved. It reports that European countries provided with sufficient social aid but they face a technical problem of relative poverty threshold. Also mentioned are the levels of economic development in developing and underdeveloped countries.

China's recent economic growth has been driven by an apparent acceptance by the Chinese government of many of the key insights of Hayek's economic and social thought. Current Chinese economic policies stand in stark contrast to those being pursued by the EU and many European countries, where interventionist policies of the kind Hayek predicted would lead to relative impoverishment and declining freedom are being pursued. The long-term consequence of these two trends is likely to be the economic dominance of China over Europe in the present century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the history of European economic growth during the period 1450-1750. According to the new school of development history, the critical period when different parts of the world set off along contrasting paths of economic growth occurred between 1450 and 1750, three centuries which witnessed the emergence and consolidation of European world economy based upon the capitalist mode of production. The evolution of trade and commerce under this old international economic order created conditions for development and underdevelopment in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A striking feature of the new history of development is the absence of systematic statistical underpinning for several of its basic hypotheses. An important omission is its failure to measure the economic significance of intercontinental trade. External trade formed only a small share of economic activity. Around 1780-1790 when something like 4 percent of Europe's gross national output was exported across national frontiers, perhaps less than 1 percent would have been sold to Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the southern plantations of the young U.S.

The article focuses on typologies and evidence that serve as a guide to economic growth in Europe during the nineteenth century. There has also been increased reliance on comparative methods by historians seeking to achieve a cross-fertilization of explanatory ideas. For both purposes it is desirable, for the first purpose essential, that any historical generalizations called into aid should be not only true of several particular instances but also should be very widely applicable. It could be harmfully misleading if what looked to be proclamations of universal relationships turned out to be no more than accounts of one or two highly individual cases, disguised in the language of generality. All the chief schemes expounding alleged universalities in the history of economic growth have received plenty of criticism, both appreciative and hostile, but it is doubtful whether they have often been starkly confronted by the question whether the evidence they use is comprehensive enough to provide a secure foundation of genuine history for edifices as vast as they have grown to be. They have been challenged on grounds of unclarity or inappropriateness in their basic concepts, or because they have been inaccurate on some specific points, or because some particular case may be more convincingly interpreted by postulating a different chain of causation.