The growth challenge for Europe and the EMU. CHALLENGE EUROPE Issue 22- Challenges and new beginnings: Priorities for the EU's new leadership, September 2014.

The European economy is slowly and painfully striving to reemerge from the last six years of crisis. It was a crisis of enormous intensity and contagiousness, given the unprecedented depth of global financial integration combined with the systemic flaws in the EMU architecture. And it is not over, as the high levels of unemployment and the growing divergence between Member States testify. The threat of fragmentation is imminent as ever: fragmentation between euro-ins and euro-outs; fragmentation between North and South; fragmentation within societies, with increasing income inequality and a growing number of, what used to be, the middle class population slipping through the social safety net and below poverty lines. Policies of front-loaded fiscal consolidation have left welfare states in economically weaker countries severely underfunded. According to OECD data, the number of people living in households without any income from work has doubled in Greece, Ireland and Spain, and has risen by 20% or more in Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, and Slovenia. Fertility rates have dropped further since the crisis, deepening the demographic and fiscal challenges of ageing. There are long-term implications from these deteriorating trends, regarding people's long-term health, education and upward mobility from low-income families. It is also highly likely that many of the people unemployed for a long period of time will never again be able to gain proper access to the job market and build a normal career track. The enduring effects of the crisis risk creating vicious cycles of low growth, high debt levels, austerity, declining productivity, and stagnation. These developments carry heavy implications for the future growth prospects of the European economies, for future prosperity, and for the sustainability of pension systems and welfare states. They must be urgently reversed.

The Russian economy under Putin: Growth factors and impediments to economic development. OSW Study 20/2005

After a dramatic economic decline after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the financial breakdown of 1998, the Russian economy has begun to emerge from its deep crisis. The years 1999-2004 were a period of dynamic development in all sectors of Russian economy, and saw a rapid growth in GDP of over 7 per cent per year. Russia owed the excellent macroeconomic results of that period to a combination of favourable factors. The key factors were: high hydrocarbon prices on the global markets; an increase in Russia's international competitiveness thanks to the "rouble devaluation effect" (following the 1998 financial crash); and the market reforms carried out within that period. In 2004, despite very high oil and gas prices on world markets, a slowdown of the GDP growth took place. Even though the economy is still developing fairly rapidly, we are able to say that Russia is exhausting those traditional mechanisms (apart from oil and gas prices) which have hitherto stimulated GDP growth. Moreover, there are no new mechanisms which could replace the old ones. In the longer term, these unsolved structural problems may seriously impede Russia's economic growth.

Is the "Dubai model" a new paradigm for growth and investment strategies for oil-based economies? Case study: Eurasia. ACES Working Papers No. 8, 2008

The first part of the paper addresses the theoretical background of economic growth and competitive advantage models. Although there is a whole set of research on a relationship between foreign direct investments and economic growth, little has been said on foreign direct investments and national competitive advantage with respect to economic growth of oil and gas abundant countries of Middle East and Central Asia. The second part of our paper introduces the framework of the so-called "Dubai Model" in detail and outlines the key components necessary to develop sustainable comparative advantage for the oil-rich economies. The third part proceeds with the methodology employed to measure the success of the "Dubai Model" in the UAE and in application to other regions. The last part brings the results and investigates the degree to which other oil and gas countries in the region (i.e. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Iran) have adopted the so-called "Dubai Model". It also examines if the Dubai Model is being employed in the Eurasian (Central Asian) oil and gas regions of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The objective is to gauge if the Eurasian economies are employing the traditional growth strategies of oil-rich non-OECD countries in managing their natural resources or are they adopting the newer non-traditional model of economic growth, such as the "Dubai Model."

Measuring the intermittent synchronicity of macroeconomic growth in Europe. ACES Cases No. 2010.1

Synchronization of growth rates are an important feature of international business cycles, particularly in relation to regional integration projects such as the single currency in Europe. Synchronization of growth rates clearly enhances the effectiveness of European Central Bank monetary policy, ensuring that policy changes are attuned to the dynamics of growth and business cycles in the majority of member states. In this paper a dissimilarity metric is constructed by measuring the topological differences between the GDP growth patterns in recurrence plots for individual countries. The results show that synchronization of growth rates were higher among the Euro area member states during the second half of the 1980s and from 1997 to roughly 2002. Apart from these two time periods, Euro area member states do not appear to be more synchronized than a group of major international countries, signifying that globalization was the major cause of international business cycle synchronization.

Progress on the “Juncker Plan” continues – but are Member States behind it? EPC Commentary, 18 March 2015

Introduction. The draft regulation on the Juncker Investment Plan was presented by the European Commission in January and has been discussed by the Ecofin Council on 10 March. This leaves sufficient time for the European Parliament to express its views and to make the Plan operational by the summer, as aimed for by President Juncker. But while governments agreed swiftly, ministers did not decide on two issues that are of importance: the eligibility of projects that have benefited from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and the Horizon 2020 programmes and the contributions of the national promotional banks (NPBs) to the investment plan. This commentary argues that the foreseeable engagement of NPBs remains unsatisfactory.

20 years of the European single market: growth effects of EU integration. Policy Brief #2014/02

The ongoing European integration has increased the economic growth of participating national economies. Calculating the cumulative gains in the real gross domestic product per capita resulting from the integration of Europe between 1992 and 2012, every national economy under consideration realized income gains from the European integration. Denmark and Germany saw the greatest gains per resident. If the values from only 1992 and 2012 are compared, every country except for Greece has been able to achieve a higher per capita income due to the European integration.