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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWe analyse common stylized facts of services firms engaged in trade in a comparative study across four EU member countries. We find that, though relatively less engaged in trade than manufacturing firms, services firms have similar traits. Services firms are more likely to import than to export. Their prevalent type of trade is trade in goods. The complexity of trade activities is increasing in firm size and productivity. Two-way traders outperform one-way traders. Services are more likely to be traded by firms already engaged in trade of goods. Changes in trading status by either adding another dimension of trade (imports, exports) or another type of product (goods, services) are infrequent and are associated with significant pre-switching premia. In contrast, learning effects from switching trading status are uncommon. This evidence points to significant fixed cost of being engaged in trade. Thus, the literature on heterogeneous firms is able to explain the sorting of firms into trading and non-trading firms in the services sectors as well.

This study identifies income convergence in Europe over 1960 to 2012. The Great Recession since 2008 reversed the GDP per capita convergence in the EU-15, but the extransition countries have mostly continued to catch up. We found this by analysing the Sigma convergence of GDP per capita in the European Union. With a few pauses, there has been convergence in the European Union since 1960. Historically, convergence has been faster when aggregate GDP growth has been faster. On top of that, we link evolvement in national income distributions with Europe-wide convergence. It is meaningful because if many people are left outside of income increases, then the general development is not in line with the spirit of the EU convergence. Generally, wealthier countries are found to have lower income disparities as measured by Gini coefficients than poorer countries. The GDP per capita convergence was not correlated with changes in income distribution over the period of 2000~2011 except for a group of six catchingTransnational Income Convergence and National Income Disparity : Europe, 1960~2012

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We analyse the number of different HS8 products in the EU countries’ exports in 1995–2015. We review what share, or coverage, of the total possible number of these products the countries have exported each year. The EU15 countries have typically witnessed a slow rise in this coverage rate, that is, a widening of their extensive margins. The exception is Finland where the share has declined considerably. On the other hand, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and the new member countries have seen a dramatic increase in their export product coverage. We analyse how the development in the coverage rate and, as a comparison, the diversification of exports as measured by the Herfindahl–Hirschman index are associated with GDP per capita growth. We find that changes in the former measure are positively associated with economic growth after we have controlled for GDP per capita catching‐up as well as investment and export activity. We also find that smaller EU economies do not specialise more than large ones in their exports as could perhaps be assumed.