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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Economics

Illinois Wesleyan University

European Union

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Convergence Of Gdp Per Capita Levels Within The Countries Of The European Union, Hayk Mardanyan May 2022

Convergence Of Gdp Per Capita Levels Within The Countries Of The European Union, Hayk Mardanyan

Undergraduate Economic Review

The process of economic convergence in the EU has been a hotly debated issue since the formation of this organization. In fact, one of the main “operational priorities” of the EU is to “[promote] sustained convergence of the economic performance” of its Member States. This paper examines how effective the EU has been in ensuring upward economic convergence among its member countries: more specifically, the paper uses linear regression analysis to check whether poorer EU member countries, concentrated in Eastern Europe, have been growing at faster rates than their richer counterparts, which are concentrated in Western and Southern Europe.


The Google Trends Uncertainty (Gtu) Index: A Measure Of Economic Policy Uncertainty In The Eu Using Google Trends, Luisa Weinberg Oct 2020

The Google Trends Uncertainty (Gtu) Index: A Measure Of Economic Policy Uncertainty In The Eu Using Google Trends, Luisa Weinberg

Undergraduate Economic Review

The objective of this research is to use Google search data to build the Google Trends Uncertainty (GTU) index, a weekly measure of uncertainty surrounding economic policy in the four largest economies in the European Union: Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. By obtaining the relative popularity of Google searches with economic policy uncertainty connotations given a specific timeframe and geographical area, the frequency with which people search for terms related to economic policy effectively serves as a proxy for actual economic policy uncertainty. In its entirety, the various elements of this research allow to accurately and unbiasedly measure economic policy …


Belgium’S 2008 Recentralization Of Wage-Setting Mechanisms And The Decentralization-Unit Labor Costs-Net Exports Link: Chronicle Of A Death Foretold?, Ines Pedro Fernandes Mar 2019

Belgium’S 2008 Recentralization Of Wage-Setting Mechanisms And The Decentralization-Unit Labor Costs-Net Exports Link: Chronicle Of A Death Foretold?, Ines Pedro Fernandes

Undergraduate Economic Review

Anchored on scholarly literature on international competitiveness and the classical definition of competitiveness as net exports, policy making institutions support decentralized wage-setting mechanisms. The rationale is that decentralized wage-setting systems lower wages and unit labor costs (ULC) and, therefore, increase net exports. This paper contains a literature review on the wage-setting–ULC–net exports link and challenges conventional rationales by examining the co-evolution of Belgium’s real wages and net exports across wage percentiles and sectors. Belgium is a case in point, since the country experienced both increasing real wages and increasing net exports after recentralizing wage-setting mechanisms in 2008.


How European Is The European Central Bank's Monetary Policy?, Teodora D. Petrova Apr 2010

How European Is The European Central Bank's Monetary Policy?, Teodora D. Petrova

Honors Projects

Ever since its establishment in 1999, the European Central Bank worked on maintaining relative price stability mainly through inflation targeting. The ECB aims at a target inflation rate below but close to 2%. However, the diversity among the member states in the European Union and the Eurozone requires not only collective attention on the EU economy but also on each individual member state. Some Eurozone member states experience generally higher levels of inflation and higher unemployment. On the other side are countries like Germany which are more concerned with maintaining low inflation only. Many economists and politicians criticize the ECB …