Germany and the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia (the CE4) have been in a process of deepening economic integration which has lead to the development of a dynamic supply chain within Europe—the Germany-Central European Supply Chain (GCESC). Model-based simulations suggest two key policy implications: First, as a reflection of strengthening trade linkages, German fiscal spillovers to the CE4 and more broadly to the rest of the euro area, have increased over time, but are still relatively small. This is explained by the supply chain nature of trade integration: final demand in Germany is not necessarily the main determinant of CE4 exports to Germany. Second, increased trade openness in both Germany and the CE4 implies a greater exposure of the GCESC to global shocks. However, owing to its strong fundamentals—including sound balance sheets and its safe haven status— Germany plays the role of a regional anchor of stability by better absorbing shocks from other trading partners instead of amplifying their transmission across the GCESC.

Most trade is invoiced in very few currencies. Despite this, the Mundell-Fleming benchmark and its variants focus on pricing in the producer’s currency or in local currency. We model instead a ‘dominant currency paradigm’ for small open economies characterized by three features: pricing in a dominant currency; pricing complementarities, and imported input use in production. Under this paradigm: (a) the terms-of-trade is stable; (b) dominant currency exchange rate pass-through into export and import prices is high regardless of destination or origin of goods; (c) exchange rate pass-through of non-dominant currencies is small; (d) expenditure switching occurs mostly via imports, driven by the dollar exchange rate while exports respond weakly, if at all; (e) strengthening of the dominant currency relative to non-dominant ones can negatively impact global trade; (f) optimal monetary policy targets deviations from the law of one price arising from dominant currency fluctuations, in addition to the inflation and output gap. Using data from Colombia we document strong support for the dominant currency paradigm.

This book covers European perspectives on innovation management, including new product and service development, due to the inherent variety of socio-economic perspectives and institutional settings in Europe. The numerous settings and differing perspectives explored in the chapters exemplify diversity, which ultimately leads to enhancing innovation. Understanding such unique approaches will enable companies, universities and other actors to more effectively create innovative products and services, and policy makers to effectively stimulate growth and innovation. The fragmented, distributed economies in Europe also put a strong focus on internationalisation, including innovation management, new product and service development, even within the internally open market of the European Economic Area. European Perspectives on Innovation Management will be of help to researchers, managers, entrepreneurs, practitioners and students working on innovation management and practices embedded in national and regional innovation systems, thus fostering a more innovative Europe.

Germany and the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia (the CE4) have been in a process of deepening economic integration which has lead to the development of a dynamic supply chain within Europe—the Germany-Central European Supply Chain (GCESC). Model-based simulations suggest two key policy implications: First, as a reflection of strengthening trade linkages, German fiscal spillovers to the CE4 and more broadly to the rest of the euro area, have increased over time, but are still relatively small. This is explained by the supply chain nature of trade integration: final demand in Germany is not necessarily the main determinant of CE4 exports to Germany. Second, increased trade openness in both Germany and the CE4 implies a greater exposure of the GCESC to global shocks. However, owing to its strong fundamentals—including sound balance sheets and its safe haven status— Germany plays the role of a regional anchor of stability by better absorbing shocks from other trading partners instead of amplifying their transmission across the GCESC.

This report analyzes the possible spillover effects that could result if the U.S. normalizes its monetary policy while euro area countries are increasing monetary stimulus (a situation referred to as asynchronous monetary conditions). This analysis identifies country-specific shocks to economic activity and monetary conditions since the early 1990s, finding that real and monetary conditions in the United States and the euro area have oftentimes been asynchronous and have often resulted in significant spillover effects, particularly since early 2014.

Given the backdrop of pressing infrastructure needs, this paper argues that higher German public investment would not only stimulate domestic demand in the near term and reduce the current account surplus, but would also raise output over the longer-run as well as generate beneficial regional spillovers. While time-to-build delays can weaken the impact of the stimulus in the short-run, the expansionary effects of higher public investment are substantially strengthened with an accommodative monetary policy stance—as is typical during periods of economic slack. The current low-interest rate environment presents a window of opportunity to finance higher public investment at historically favorable rates.

This comprehensive Handbook deftly examines key aspects of financial integration, providing an overview of contemporary research and new perspectives. Employing state of the art econometric methods to obtain new empirical evidence, it will be critical for designing optimal policies, and appropriate investment and risk management strategies.