European Integration: Some stylised facts

The European economic integration has been an ongoing process for nearly a half century. This article discuss initially the concept of integration and then gives an overall assessment of the development of integration on various areas. Evidence points to a remarkable process towards monetary integration especially in the last decades. The significant increase of the intra-EU trade also points to a more integrated Europe especially since the establishing of the internal market. However, the integration seems to have less impact on other areas e.g. synchronisation of the business cycles between Member States and convergence of living standards. Prospects for the future development of integration is also discussed in the article.

Monopolistic Competition, International Trade and Firm Heterogeneity - a Life Cycle Perspective

This paper presents a dynamic international trade model based on monopolistic competition, where observed intra-industry differences at a given point in time reflect different stages of the firm’s life cycle. New product varieties of still higher quality enter the market every period rendering old varieties obsolescent in a process of creative destruction. For given technology (variety) production costs decrease after an infant period due to learning. It is shown that several patterns of exports may arise depending primarily on the size of fixed trade costs. At a given point in time firms therefore differ due to different age, although all firms are symmetric in a life cycle perspective. The paper thus offers an alternative view on firm heterogeneity compared with other recent papers, where productivity differences appear as an outcome of a stochastic process.Product innovations; learning; creative destruction; firm heterogeneity; export performance

Scale in Technology and Learning-by-Doing in the Windmill Industry

This paper examines the remarkable development of technology and the fast learning-by-doing in the windmill industry since it emerged in the beginning of the 1980s. Based on time series of prices of windmills a dynamic cost function for producing windmills is tested. The estimations verified that learning-by-doing in the Danish windmill industry has contributed significantly to improve the cost efficiency of the producers. The technological development has been stimulated both by process and product innovations as the capacity of the individual mills has increased. The learning effect created by early subsidies from the government has consolidated the competitive advantages of the windmill cluster in Denmark and preserved the first mover advantages at the world market. The article concludes that the industry probably will enter into a matured phase in the future with more modest technological growth.Learning-by-doing; scale in technology; process and product innovations

Work Hours, Social Value of Leisure and Globalisation

We examine how openness interacts with the coordination of consumption-leisure decisions in determining the equilibrium working hours and wage rate when there are leisure externalities (e.g., due to social interactions). The latter are modelled by allowing a workers marginal utility of leisure to be increasing in the leisure time taken by other workers. Coordination takes the form of internalising the leisure externality and other relevant constraints (e.g., labour demand). The extent of openness is measured by the degree of capital mobility. We find that: coordination lowers equilibrium work hours and raises the wage rate; there is a U-shaped (inverse-U-shaped) relationship between work hours (wages) and the degree of coordination; coordination is welfare improving; and, the gap between the coordinated and uncoordinated work hours (and the corresponding wage rates) is affected by the extent and nature of openness.coordination; corporatism; openness; capital mobility; social multiplier; welfare; work hours

The Establishment of the Danish Windmill Industry - Was it Worthwhile?

The European Court of Justice's definition of when a firm has a dominant position has recently come under attack as being meaningless and impossible to measure. We argue that both attacks are wrong, suggest an economic interpretation of domination and propose how it may be measured using modern time series econometrics. We illustrate the approach empirically.learning-by-doing; infant industry; green subsidies

Are Ownership Structures Risk- & Wealth-Constrained?

The paper considers the owners of the firms as normal investors who want to optimise the return from their investments in accordance with their wealth constraint and the risk of their investment in the firm. The paper tests this theory on a representative sample of Danish companies including small firms. Concerning the wealth constraint for owners, the study finds evidence of more dispersed ownership in larger and more capital-demanding firms. According to the investors risk aspect, firms operating on foreign markets are more likely to have more than one owner. Concerning the domestic markets the owner structure is more dispersed in industries with a volatile business cycle.corporate governance; ownership structures

Green Subsidies and Learning-by-doing in the Windmill Industry.

This paper examines the remarkable learning-by-doing in the windmill industry since it emerged in the beginning of the 1980's. Green subsidies for producing electricity by wind power has been a precondition for the rapid growth in the production of windmills. Based on time series of prices of windmills a dynamic cost function for producing windmills is tested. The cost disadvantage of producing electricity by windmills relative to traditional power stations has narrowed considerably because of a strong learning-by-doing effect. The deliberate policy to subsidize production of electricity by windpower has placed Denmark in a first-mover position in this market and the future has to show whether this is a successful story of an infant industrial policy.Learning-by-doing; infant industry; green subsidies