Europe’s market for services is fragmented by many regulatory barriers. The Services directive proposed by the European Commission aims to integrate national services markets by reducing these barriers. Several studies indicate that bilateral trade and foreign direct investment in services...

European business services has witnessed about two decades of virtual productivity stagnation. The paper investigates whether this is caused by weak dynamic market selection. The time pattern of scale-related inefficiencies is used as an indicator for the effectiveness of market selection. We...

In international forums the EU calls for freedom of movement for goods, services and capital. Freedom of movement of labour - labour migration in other words - is excluded from this claim, certainly in relation to medium- and low-skilled labour. This paper addresses two questions. Firstly, what...

The paper proposes a new way of analysing the efficiency of dynamic market selection, based on the persistence of scale economies. The new methodology is used to investigate the causes of stagnating productivity growth in EU business services. An efficient market ensures that more productive...

The paper proposes a new way of analysing the efficiency of dynamic market selection, based on the persistence of scale economies. The new methodology is used to investigate the causes of stagnating productivity growth in EU business services. The persistence of scale-related inefficiencies is...

The paper tests the role of agglomeration effects on the export decision of services firms. Recent theories on trade with heterogeneous firms predict that export participation goes along with sunk market-entry costs. Only the more productive firms will be able to overcome these sunk costs. This...

Private and public concern about digital security, cybercrime and data privacy is growing the last few years. If Internet-related markets are flexible enough to cope with security concerns, given time, one would expect that - per unit of Internet traffic - the number and costs of cybersecurity...

The European Union import policy for bananas grants preferential trade access for ACP bananas and discriminates against bananas from other sources. It is shown that such trade discrimination cannot be defended by development-related motives. As a form of aid transfer to banana-exporting ACP...

The paper proposes a new way of analysing the efficiency of dynamic market selection, based on the persistence of scale economies. The persistence of scale-related inefficiencies is used as an indicator for the effectiveness of market selection. We use a DEA method to construct the productivity...

The paper develops a stand-alone and testable gravity model to explain international patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI). The core model is based on knowledge-based gravitational forces that are directly or indirectly linked to a country's economic mass (GDP). The micro-economic part of...