Structural reforms for growth and cohesion. Lessons and challenges for CESEE countries and a modern Europe

Summary:

With formidable challenges facing Europe today, effective and well-designed structural reforms are key to shaping Europe’s future. This book examines the achievements and failures of past structural policies so that new concepts can evolve to address remaining and newly emerging challenges with greater success.

Tangible policy advice is offered in the original contributions to this book, reassessing past ‘moments of truth’ in European structural policy. The book focuses on the area of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE), not least because this region has been largely successful through a profound transition period.

Highlighting the social aspects and distributional effects of reforms that go beyond liberalization and deregulation, the book covers key issues facing Europe in the future, particularly those arising from technological innovation.

Contents:

1. Past and future reform challenges for CESEE and Europe at large | Ewald Nowotny, Doris Ritzberger-Grünwald and Helene Schuberth
2. Revisiting transition reform | Sergei Guriev
3. Europe’s moments of truth: wicked crises, good and bad consequences | Sonja Puntscher Riekmann
4. Social Europe: the pillar of social rights | Georg Fischer
5. Innovation in the CESEE region: the role of business environment, financing and reforms | Helena Schweiger
6. Squaring the circle: the EU and the challenge of delivering better policies for a globalized world | Daria Taglioni
7. Non-tariff measures for better or worse | Mahdi Ghodsi, Julia Gruebler, Oliver Reiter and Robert Stehrer
8. Structural reforms and income distribution: an empirical analysis | Orsetta Causa
9. Labour market hierarchies and the unemployment-wage nexus in CESEE and in the EU | Paul Ramskogler
10. Structural reforms in Slovakia: past and present (never-ending story …) | Jozef Makúch
11. Crisis management and economic policy shifts in Hungary after 2010 | Barnabás Virág
12. Ensuring monetary and financial stability in the Czech Republic | Jiří Rusnok
13. Sustainable pension reforms: what can we learn from the experiences of Poland and other EU countries? | Paweł A. Strzelecki
14. Europeanization meets transformation: a political economy approach to transition | Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
15. Reforms in the EU: the interface of national and Community levels | Lázló Csaba
16. Reflections on a public risk-sharing capacity for the euro area | Hubert Gabrisch
17. Reviving convergence: making EU member states fit for joining the euro area | Lúcio Vinhas de Souza, Oliver Dreute, Vladimir Isaila and Jan-Martin Frie