EU competitiveness

For a re-launch of productivity in the European territory: from post-crisis structural changes to alternative development scenarios

The world economic crisis generated profound structural changes affecting the relative position of Europe in the international division of labour. The major ones regard: i) a shift in trade specialization and patterns, with China, dynamic Asian countries and the rest of the world drastically enlarging their share with respect to the OECD countries; ii) advanced economies moving up the value chain, leaving to underdeveloped countries the lead to produce low value-added goods; iii) increase in the share of trade with respect to final and intermediate industrial goods; iv) losses of manufacturing jobs and a move to a low value-added service specialization of many local economies in Europe.
With the idea that European competitiveness lies also in the capacity to put in place a geographically balanced growth pattern, the project has the aim to understand the impact of the structural changes that took place during the crisis and to build post-crisis scenarios on European regional economies.