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The paper proposes the construction of a multi-speed, multi-track and multi-level European Union framework as a way to increase the flexibility of the integration process and facilitate inter-country conflict resolution. The paper shows that this malleable framework is superior, even for sensitive macroeconomic spillover issues like monetary union and immigration.

The Eurozone is at a crossroads. Its neoliberal and ordoliberal construction proved to be unworkable and, after the crisis, made the macroeconomic adjustment slow and costly – causing financial and real divergence among the member countries. Kolodko’s writings offer interesting insights. This article considers Kolodko’s study of Poland and Greece and adds two other paradigmatic cases, those of Germany and Italy. Kolodko’s case studies and criticism of neoliberalism lead him to propose a New Pragmatism in policy making. This proposal offers important insights, but neglects two fundamental problems: moral hazard and institutional differences. These have to be included in the New Pragmatism to give this the strength and ability to contribute to solve the Eurozone problems.

The European debt crisis has shown that the future of the European Union (EU) depends on the willingness of each member country to implement responsible policies, avoid moral hazard and uncooperative attitudes, and ensure stability and soundness. However, the European institutional variety means that each member country reacts differently to shocks and policies, follows a different path of recovery, and adapts to common institutions, including the common currency, in different ways. Helping countries to converge toward a situation that guarantees well-being, stability, and development at the national and community level is the goal of the European benchmark. This benchmark is a framework inspired by European treaties that, through the distance-to-frontier score methodology, aims to measure member countries’ performance and identify inefficiencies and negative externalities within the economic, social, and political institutions of each member country. The paper presents an empirical investigation of the European benchmark. Based on the results obtained, all countries can improve their performance, and none of them can be considered a model for the others. However, the Mediterranean and post-communist countries have more challenges to face and therefore need to make greater efforts.

Universities in the European Union are called to support integration and pursue economic value, as evidenced in both European and national strategies. In line with this perspective, European higher education institutions strengthen the value of their education and knowledge output while reinforcing their economic basis. The former goal is in line with the greater competition among economies, the latter became important following the international crisis and the fiscal crisis of many European states. A particular feature of higher education institutions in the European Union is their role in supporting European integration, with particular concern for a unified labor market. Much of the EU action has thus been concentrated on moving governments and universities in the direction of pursuing the integration of national education systems. To do so, and given the limited EU competences in education, the European Commission has proposed strategies and goals and has provided (part of) the necessary resource basis. National governments in turn are called to implement the necessary reforms. The fundamental component of this approach is the so-called Bologna Process that created the European Higher Education Area. The core of the Process is to ensure comparability in the standards and quality of higher-education qualifications among European countries. The outcome of these processes has been important, but much remains to be done. The paper critically analyzes the evolution of the European higher education and research system within the frame of European integration and with a view to the goals pursued, the results achieved, and the challenges ahead.

Transformation processes in Central and Eastern Europe and deep economic reforms in China and other emerging countries did not end the variety of economic systems. Various brands of comparative economics have shown this variety in both theory and different countries. An increasingly important form of this variety concerns the process of European integration. Systemic differences within the European Union are the source of difficulties and tensions, of a European conundrum that appears in different forms and ways and that make the sustainability and progress of integration difficult. This article looks at the logic of and proposals by the “New Comparative Economics” and the “Variety of Capitalisms” literature to find an explanation to the problems and difficulties that the European integration is meeting, going beyond the standard technical explanations based on European convergence criteria. It finds that both theories, although important and useful for contributing to solving the European conundrum, do n...

The consultative referendum held on June 23, 2013, showed that a majority of British voters are in favour of leaving the EU. Markets reacted and adapted, and politics made the first steps towards a UK outside the EU and an EU without Britain. This paper looks at the expected effects of Brexit in different fields: political and social effects, consequences for production and trade, and financial and fiscal effects. It then presents the institutional process of leaving the EU, stressing its indeterminacy, and considers the first steps undertaken so far. It concludes that the EU negotiation position is weak because of its internal problems and calls for the priority given in reforming the EU.

1. Where is Europe Headed? An Introduction Bruno Dallago, Gert Guri and John McGowan Part One: The European Project: Moving Forward with Dry Eyes Steven Rosefielde 3. The EU in Stormy Seas: Beginning of the End or End of the Beginning Klaus Gretschmann 4. Signalling imbalances in the EMU Nicola Acocella 5. On the Crisis of the EMU: Failed Construction, Failed Implementation or Failed Crisis Management? Laszlo Csaba 6. The European Crisis: Testing the Trust Foundations of an Economic and Monetary Union Simona Piattoni 7. Assessing the Europe 2020 Strategy Paolo Pasimeni 8. Reinforcing Europe's failed fiscal regulatory state Scott Greer and Holly Jarman 9. The monetary union and migration Bruno Dallago 10. The Future of the German Model after the Labour Market Reforms Joachim Moller Part Two: Introduction to Part Two John McGowan 12. The Euro and Eastern Europe Paul Marer 13. Global Value Chains, Changing Divisions of Labour, and the Regulation of Work in EU27 and Euro-Med John Pickles 14. The Euro as a House of Straw: Why Europe's Crisis is (still) Linked to American Housing Herman Mark Schwartz 15. Where goes Russia? The risks of a continental divide Eric Brunat 16. Russia, The European Union, and the Ukrainian Crisis: A European or a Eurasian Affair? Jacob Kipp

The concluding chapter considers the findings of the book at the light of academic studies and research of entrepreneurship and looks at what explains the evolution of entrepreneurship in transition countries. The chapter stresses that there are still differences between these countries, even those integrated in the European Union (EU), and the most developed countries of Western Europe and North America. Differences are of economic, political and social nature and, increasingly so, also in geostrategic sense. These differences apparently justify that the need for, the role of and the features of entrepreneurship in transition countries may be different compared to what we are used to see and consider in mature economic contexts. This is so for different reasons: the context that globalization brought about; the need to contribute to the success of transition; the peculiar origin of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs and their evolution in the process of transition first and consolidation of the new market context then; the similarities and differences among Central and Easter Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries in a comparative perspective. The chapter looks at the relevant literature and properly places the contributions presented in the book.

The paper deals with the role that universities can have in promoting innovation in general and at local and regional level in particular. In doing this, the nature of universities and the quality of their relations to industry and governments is of paramount importance. During the last three decades university-industry relationships and the supportive role of governments moved from more general, upstream approaches in line with the traditional public role of universities to more specific, downstream focused approaches. The latter approaches lead to universities playing directly an economically useful role. This move is complementary to the move in the dominant relationship between universities and industry from large transnational companies and few large and prestigious universities to mostly small and medium size enterprises and regional universities. Universities contribution to local development is thus increasingly important, although not without dangers for the integrity of universities. Yet it turns out that producing knowledge is not enough and also the absorptive capacity of the local context and its actors is necessary. The concept of learning regions is aimed to stress this relationship and is therefore particularly useful and productive to analyze and understand the role of universities in innovation.

I. Transatlantic Linkages 1. Ken Ash, The Implications of Global Value Chains for Trade Policy and Trade Agreement 2. Ivan Belyacz and Erzsebet Szasz, The Deeper Roots of the Financial System's Propensity to Crisis 3. Bruno Dallago, The Financial and Real Crisis in the Eurozone and Vulnerable Economies II. The Crisis and Policies: A Transatlantic Perspective 4. Steven Rosefielde, Secular Crisis: The Mundell-Fleming Trilemma and EU De-Legitimization 5. Quinn Mills, Assessment of the EU's management of the EZ crisis 6. Nicola Acocella, A Tale of two cities: Exit Policies in Washington and Frankfurt III. Institutions, Rivalry and the Consequences for Democracy 7. Simona Piattoni, Institutional Innovations and EU Legitimacy after the Crisis 8. Paul Blokker, The European Crisis as a Crisis of Democratic Capitalism 9. Layna Mosley, (De)Fault Lines? The EU, National Governments and Private Capital Markets in the Post-Crisis Era IV. The European Currency and Transatlantic Relations 10. Domenico Mario Nuti, Euroarea: Premature, Diminished, Divergent 11. Paolo Guerrieri, The Euro Crisis and its Impact upon Transatlantic Relations 12. Alfred Steinherr, Why Germany should leave the Euro 13. Roberto Tamborini, EMU 2.0 and the German Problem

This chapter provides an overview of the economic-political transition in post-Communist states and the role of international organizations, particularly the European Union, which through integration conditionality played an important role in the transition. It also provides a methodical matrix of the main domestic and exogenous rationales, which stemmed the decentralization in different Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs). The chapter offers an analytical categorization of the approaches employed at the decentralized local level to promote local development, focusing on approaches analyzing the role of regional development agencies (RDAs) and area-based strategies to enhance local development. Keywords:area based development (ABD) approach; capital-centered economic development; Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs); regional development agencies (RDAs)

This book is about transformation in the framework of European integration. However uncertain the latter has become after the unexpected results of the French and Dutch referendums on the European constitution, the path for the Balkans to European integration is outlined, although the exact track is admittedly uncertain, with the exception of Romania and Bulgaria.

Preface Introduction: economic transformation and the challenge of youth entrepreneurship in Central and Eastern Europe, Paul Blokker and Bruno Dallago. Section 1 Youth Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment in Transition Economies: From unemployment to entrepreneurship: creating conditions for change for young people in Central and Eastern European countries, Sergio Arzeni and Jay Mitra Youth entrepreneurship and self-employment as a source of employment in Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, Klaus Haftendorn The young self-employed in East-Central Europe, Ken Roberts Increasing youth employment opportunities by assisting business start-ups. The experience of the Hungarian LiveWire Foundation, Peter Szirmai. Section 2 Youth Entrepreneurship at Work: a Comparison of New Member Countries and Accession Countries: The strata of young entrepreneurs in post-socialist Hungary: chance or illusion?, Mihaly Laki Supporting youth entrepreneurship in Slovenia, Miroslav Glas and Blaz Zupan The development of youth entrepreneurship in Bulgaria, Rossitsa Rangelova Promoting youth enterprise and self-employment: the case of Croatia, Ivo Bicanic and Marina Lang-Perica Index.