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From the perspective of the diversity of capitalism and that of economic sociology, the article deals with the issue of center-peripheral relations as one of the key dimensions of economic diversification that determines the development opportunities of the European Union. The collapse of the convergence processes during the 2008–2010 financial crisis revealed the separateness of development trajectories of various countries and geographical regions of the EU. Without reversing this phenomenon and working out new mechanisms of development convergence and institutions supporting them, the process of European integration will enter further structural crises that may lead to the disintegration of the EU. Various classifications of the core and of the peripheries of the euro area are characterized, within which several types of countries are identified with different economic characteristics (countries of the Northern core and of the Southern peripheries of the euro area, different types of peripheries in Southern Europe and in Central and Eastern Europe, the internal core and the external core or the outer core, and the internal peripheries and the external peripheries, as well as the super-peripheries including candidates or potential candidates to join the EU). The COVID-19 crisis has an asymmetric impact on the economic situation of the Member States. As with other crises, this impact will be the result of the interconnection of the prior state of economies, structural differences in growth patterns, and responses to new challenges brought about by the pandemic. Also, the consequences of the pandemic for the reconfiguration of center-peripheral relations in the EU are discussed, with a particular focus on the CEE.

Mexico and South Korea have progressed in their commercial affairs since they began diplomatic relations in 1962. Currently, the possibility of negotiating a free trade agreement between both economies is being raised. The objective of this research is to evaluate the potential effects of such a trade agreement for both countries. For this, indexes of commercial intensity, revealed comparative advantages, complementarity, and commercial similarity are used. The results show that these two countries have intensified their trade relations, turning Mexico into South Korea's main trading partner in Latin America and giving rise to a complementary trade structure with advantages for Mexico in the trade of mineral fuels, lubricants, machinery, and transport equipment. Also, an asymmetry was found in the tariff rates that could generate commercial advantages, especially for Mexico in the primary sector in case of the signing of a free trade agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These data were obtained from the World Development Indicators (World Bank, 2021). HT ht represents the country fixed effect, HT ht represents the year fixed effect, and HT ht is the error term. OSA Table 2 presents the estimation results of DRI using the new DRI for the 60 countries between 2005 and 2018 and a two stage least squares panel analysis. [Extracted from the article]

We present an Agent Based-Stock Flow Consistent Multi-Country model of a Monetary Union to analyze the impact of a change in the fiscal regime of member countries, modeled as a permanent change in the deficit-to-gross domestic product (GDP) target that governments are committed to comply. Simulations are performed under three scenarios, differentiated by the number of countries considered (2, 6, 10). The parametric configuration employed yields economically reasonable values for the dynamics and relative dimension of key variables, broadly comparable with historical data and available stylized facts. Our policy experiments show that fiscal expansions generally allow to improve the dynamics of real GDP, labor productivity, and employment, though being generally associated with higher levels of public debt. Conversely, permanent fiscal contractions always exert strong recessionary effects, exacerbate real GDP volatility, and tend to be self-defeating in the long run. In scenarios where the Monetary Union includes a greater number of countries and the common market is bigger, fiscal austerity raises—rather than decreasing—average public debt-to-GDP ratios. We show that this is mainly related to a raise of debt-to-GDP in poorer and less productive countries mirrored by a reduction of their net foreign asset position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article tackles the political and legal environment within the borders of the European Union (EU) member states. Determinants of the political and legal environment of the European market were identified on two levels: (1) the framework, i.e. supranational European political and legal conditions; (2) the classical political and legal environment of the EU member states. Afterwards, an analysis of individual factors of the political and legal environment in the aforementioned levels was performed. Four legal areas in the EU states were demonstrated: Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and mixed; three jurisdictional systems were identified: case law, continental and Scandinavian law; and the legal framework of the Union was found to consist of primary legislation, secondary legislation and adjudications of the Court of Justice of the EU. The problem of excessive duration of the administrative procedures, untimeliness and incomplete transposition of directives into the national law of the member states was discussed. It was also brought to attention that the diversity of laws and taxes is still a significant barrier to foreign operations of businesses in the EU internal market. It was also indicated that the integration of European law enables economic entities to perform marketing activities in the European market in the form of a representative office or a foreign branch without legal entity. Finally, it was stated that the factors of the political and legal environment are significantly unified in the supranational environment, while in the classical environment, there are some differences among the EU countries, but they allow for the use of unified marketing concepts, e.g. the concept of euromarketing.

This study investigated the influence of regional economic integration (REI) on poverty reduction and the revenue distribution in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) over the period 1994–2018. The second generation panel unit root tests and the Westerlund panel cointegration test were employed for preliminary analysis. The elasticities of the variables were investigated using the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) approach. The results showed that REI reduced income inequality and increased the poverty rate. Moreover, the causal relationship revealed the presence of a bidirectional relationship between REI and poverty. The feedback causal effect operated between REI and remittances, while unidirectional causality runs from REI to income inequality, from economic growth per capita to income inequality, from remittances to poverty, from the control of corruption to income inequality, and from remittances to economic growth. Consequently, the study recommends an easing of governmental regional integration restrictions and provision of subsidies that help to increase the volume of trade and financial development while reducing poverty in the union.

This article provides an accessible overview of the current state of ASEAN, focusing on trade integration and the role of regional and global value chains, with particular attention to China. The ASEAN economies have generally performed well and have benefited from technological and policy advances, as well as their proximity to China. The article discusses the deepening of regional integration, particularly in sectors such as electronics and automotive. It also highlights the policy challenges that ASEAN faces, including the need for enforcing commitments and addressing collective action problems. The article raises questions about the adequacy of ASEAN's model and the role of regional commitments, while acknowledging the potential impact of national-level reforms and exposure to other countries' experiences. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses Vietnam's economic growth and the challenges it faces in achieving its development goals. The authors argue that Vietnam needs to extend its existing growth drivers and initiate new ones. The article also highlights the progress Vietnam has made in policy formulation and implementation, particularly in areas such as private sector development. However, the article suggests that presenting general policy prescriptions may not be effective in moving the policy debate forward, and that Vietnam needs to set clear priorities and narrow its focus to generate truly effective policies. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the economic integration and growth within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the challenges and opportunities it faces. It highlights the role of China in ASEAN's trade and the progress of global and regional value chains in the region. The article also emphasizes the importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) in driving economic growth in ASEAN, particularly from East Asian economies. It suggests policy recommendations for sustaining growth and integration, including infrastructure development, digitalization, and liberalization of services trade. The article concludes by mentioning the potential impacts of the US-China trade and technology disputes on ASEAN and the need for further research on growth drivers and convergence among ASEAN member states. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the challenges faced by Vietnam in finding new drivers of economic growth to avoid a middle-income trap. The authors argue that traditional growth drivers are no longer effective and propose five new drivers, including active integration, labor productivity, innovation and research, high-value services, and green growth. However, they note that Vietnam has not taken visible actions to implement these drivers. The article also highlights the importance of addressing issues related to government action, mindset, politics, incentives, and state capacity in order to execute necessary policies. The author emphasizes the need for multidisciplinary analysis in addition to economics. [Extracted from the article]

This paper examines the role of global and regional uncertainties on output and price dynamics connectedness between members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) over the period of 1990 to 2020. The paper employs the Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregression connectedness framework to compute the spillover indexes and the non-parametric causality-in-quantile approach to analyze the causal effect of Global and Africa uncertainties on the output and price connectedness between the countries. Our findings indicate a high degree of interdependence between ECOWAS members in terms of output and prices with the exception of Togo and Mali which show the weakest vulnerability to idiosyncratic shocks from other West African countries. Also, the causal analysis provides evidence supporting a non-linear causal relationship between economic and trade uncertainties and the connectedness between ECOWAS economies, mostly at lower and median quantiles. Policymakers are advised to ensure stability in economic policies and rapid policy intervention to tackle economic crises to reduce economies' exposure to risks and speculative shocks.

The identification of the full range of ingredients of the Schumpeterian dynamics enables to contribute the analytical framework of evolutionary complexity. According to this Schumpeterian perspective, broad societal transformations, as the opening of international trade, can be viewed as the causes and consequences of the Schumpeterian creative response that enables economies to cope with the rapid and radical change of product and factor markets by means the introduction of innovations. Innovations support the increase of total factor productivity (TFP), however, only if, when, and where new technological knowledge could be generated at costs below equilibrium. The econometric evidence of 14 European countries in the years 1990–2016 shows that a larger country's trade openness increases the TFP both directly, from market selection, and indirectly, from greater innovative efforts that were stronger the lower the unit patent costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the Trump trade war, China, the EU, and other countries enacted politically-targeted trade retaliation (PTTR) against swing states and Republican strongholds in the United States. We argue that PTTR increases public concerns about foreign election interference and assess the effects of such retaliation across partisan affiliations. We test our predictions using a national survey experiment in the United States fielded before the 2020 election. In contrast to findings about sanctions and foreign endorsements, we find strong evidence that PTTR increases fears of election interference among both Republicans and Democrats. Partisan double standards in reaction to PTTR were strongest for retaliation targeting swing states and smaller for retaliation targeting the President's base. Overall, the evidence shows that economic policies which are not primarily intended to influence elections may nevertheless come to be viewed by the public as foreign election interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a novel database on multinational production (MP), this article investigates the impact of preferential trade agreements on foreign affiliates' production activities. We find that trade agreements with investment provisions have a positive effect on MP. On average, signing an agreement including investment provisions is associated with increased MP up to 26% in the manufacturing sector and 34% in the services sector. Our findings suggest that investment provisions increase MP by facilitating multinationals operations in foreign markets, especially for activities requiring the proximity of suppliers and consumers, and by helping multinationals joining global value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, studies with different methods (computable general equilibrium models, dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models, structural gravity equations) evaluated the European Union's Single Market. The problem with all these studies is that they use complex models with datasets that are not always replicable. This paper demonstrates that even a simple model of the European Union can capture the most important effects of European economic integration: the European Union's Single Market, the introduction of the Euro, and the following European Union enlargements. A simple European Union model, built with the publicly available program, EViews, serves this purpose. The dataset is also freely available from the European Commission. This makes the model results replicable. Evaluation of Austrian membership in the European Union is in the foreground of the analysis with the simple European Union model, followed by the next steps of integration, such as the introduction of the Euro and the big European Union enlargements. However, this prototype model is also able to estimate the integration effects of other European Union member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's globalized and interconnected world, international relationships are becoming ever more important. This applies not only to political relations but also to transnational attachment, a positive and solidary mutual attitude between the citizens of two countries, which is mainly based on social capital and trust. In particular border areas can benefit enormously when people have a bond with their neighboring country and its inhabitants. Due to their geographic proximity and historically shaped identity, border regions have a high potential for increased economic and social exchange. While empirical work on these characteristics of specific border areas is scarce, this article presents a novel approach which applies the concept of transnational social capital taking the French–German border area as an example. The representative study is based on telephone interviews, which were conducted in the border area and in regions within the two countries as a control for country-level effects. We find strong evidence for border region attachment in form of higher levels of social capital and trust in the border area. Our findings have important implications for borderland economies in general and in particular for cross-border resilience with regard to prevailing risks like upcoming nationalism and disasters such as the Covid-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is too early to confirm the depth and the sustainability of this new trend towards slower globalisation, it may be happening in more domains than we are fully aware of, at least for the near term given the renewed backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war and the wider use of sanctions globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]