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This article investigates the competitiveness of agri-food exports of the European Union (EU-27) countries on global markets, using the revealed comparative advantage (B) index over the years 2000-11. Panel unit root tests, mobility index and the Kaplan-Meier survival rates of the B index are used. The majority of agri-food products in the EU-27 countries show a comparative disadvantage on global markets. The B indices of the EU-27 countries tend to convergence. Most of the old EU-15 Member States experienced a greater number of agri-food products having a longer duration of revealed comparative advantages than have most of the new EU-12 Member States. Among the most successful Member States in agri-food export competitiveness on global markets are the Netherlands, France and Spain. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractIndustrial policy is an important tool of economic policy‐making, and this has been the case especially since the onset of the current global financial crisis in 2008. However, only relatively few empirical studies consider the macroeconomic effects of industrial policy, especially for European Union countries. In this study we investigate the effect of state aid policy on economic growth and investment, using a panel data set which covers 27 European Union countries over the period 1992–2011. Our results suggest that state aid policy is not an effective tool to achieve higher economic growth and investment rates.

The paper studies the fiscal policies implemented in the European Union
countries since the beginning of the current crisis. With this aim in mind we
have analyzed separately the expansionary fiscal policies implemented at the
first stage of the crisis and the fiscal consolidation policies that became
widespread at the beginning of the current decade. Studying the content of
the national fiscal policies (discretionary measures versus built-in
stabilizers, revenue-based versus expenditure-based fiscal policies, the
relationship existing between the size of the fiscal impulses-adjustments and
the composition of these measures) shows the significant differences between
the fiscal policies implemented in the European Union countries.

This paper analyzes the process of industrial diversification in the countries that were part of the European Union (EU-27) and those that were the target of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in the period 1995–2010 by means of world trade data derived from the BACI database (elaborated UN Comtrade data). Our results show that in both the EU-27 and the ENP countries, the evolution of the productive structure—as proxied by the export mix—is strongly path-dependent: countries tend to keep a comparative advantage in products that are strongly related to their current productive structure, and they also diversify in nearby products. However, this effect is much stronger for ENP countries, signalling their lower resources and capabilities to diversify in products that are not very related to their productive structure. We also show that the future export structures of countries are affected by their imports: both the EU-27 and ENP countries keep a comparative advantage in products that are strongly related to their imports, but only EU countries show a strong capability to diversify in new products from related import sectors. Our results also hold when controlling for geographical and institutional proximity.

State aid aimed to certain market participants, especially some of its categories, carries a risk of distortion of competition. Therefore, it is necessary to control allocation of state aid and its direction from the sectoral objectives towards more justified horizontal objectives of allocating. This paper examines the practice of assigning sectoral state aid in the European Union and in the selected Western Balkan countries by using the methods of comparative and correlation analysis. The aim is to identify deviations and point out to the preferred ways of state aid allocation.

We still do not fully understand why attitudes toward the European Union differ among citizens. In this study, we turn to the Big Five personality traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism as antecedents of European Union attitudes. In a national survey, we focus on attitudes toward widening and deepening of the European Union, trust in European Union institutions, identification with the European Union and negative affect experienced toward the European Union. We theorize that the Big Five traits are heterogeneously associated with the different European Union attitudes. We confirm that the Big Five traits are indeed associated with some but not all European Union attitudes. Accordingly, personality is expected to shape how citizens' respond to changes in the institutional set-up of the European Union.

Although the European rules on water, which are mainly based on the Water Framework Directive (WFD 2000/60/EC), have been in force for many years, the quality of waters in Europe still have huge room for improvement before they can fulfil the objectives set by the WFD and by its "daughters Directive". Two questions are key here: Are the European rules adequate for this challenging goal? If yes, are the rules applied homogeneously and correctly in European Union Countries or do many issues remain which prevent their full implementation?
This article provides a broad overview of water issues in Europe, focusing on the level of fulfillment of requisites from EU legislation and the level of its implementation in Member States. This point of view has been adopted because an uneven implementation of EU laws prevents several European citizens from fulfillment of their right to a healthy environment and a good water resource quality and, furthermore, endangers the level playing field across Europe, from a social and economic point of view.

This paper examines the effects of a common currency on the quality of traded goods. For this purpose, we construct a quality‐based heterogeneous firm trade model to incorporate the formation of currency unions and the ensuing elimination of exchange rate volatility. Our main hypothesis is that a common currency enables low‐quality (low marginal cost) firms to commence exporting to the common currency's member countries, which causes the average export price to fall. We empirically test this hypothesis for the euro and the eurozone using Harmonized System 8‐digit traded product data for European Union countries.