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The world order is changing, with the lead of the US waning, along with its reduced commitment to rule-based multilateralism during the past administration. China is on the way to becoming number one again, investing abroad with primarily egoistic motives and steered by an authoritarian domestic regime. Meanwhile, the EU is striving for a new geopolitical role, while becoming more heterogenous.

The paper measures performance and competitiveness not only according to conventional criteria but also based on broader welfare indicators. The ultimate aim of competitiveness is to deliver well-being. Decentralized local strategies are presented, but also the need for guidance by societal goals.

What we measure matters. The EU is underperforming in per capita GDP and failing to close the gap in labour productivity towards the frontier defined by the USA. But it is leading in environmental and social indicators, has an accessible health system and provides increasing longevity. This performance nevertheless has to be improved, if climate goals should be fulfilled and upcoming new inequalities addressed.

Localization and place-based strategies have advantages, but also harper the danger that negative spillovers may not be minimized and positive not used. Innovation is a search process but has to be directed by goals in Europe and globally. Otherwise, change incurs high costs and many losers, fostering nationalism and populistic calls to return to a past glory that never existed.

The role of money and monetary policy of the central bank in pursuing macroeconomic stability has significantly changed over the period since the end of World War II. Globalization, liberalization, integration, and transition processes generally shaped the crucial milestones of the macroeconomic development and substantial features of economic policy and its framework in Europe. Policy-driven changes together with variety of exogenous shocks significantly affected the key features of macroeconomic environment on the European continent that fashioned the framework and design of monetary policies.

This chapter examines the key basis of the central bank’s monetary policy on its way to pursue and preserve the internal and external stability of the purchasing power of money. Substantial elements of the monetary policy like objectives and strategies are not only generally introduced but also critically discussed according to their accuracy, suitability, and reliability in the changing macroeconomic conditions. Brief overview of the Eurozone common monetary policy milestones and the past Eastern bloc countries’ experience with a variety of exchange rate regimes provides interesting empirical evidence on origins and implications of vital changes in the monetary policy conduction in Europe and the Eurozone.

The purpose of this study is to develop a comprehensive international tax evasion framework by examining how national cultural variables and economic structural variables impact individuals’ tax morale and tax evasion.

This study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to simultaneously analyze direct and indirect paths between country-level variables, tax morale, and tax evasion.

The results of this study show that multiple cultural and structural level variables directly impact tax evasion. Further, multiple cultural variables indirectly impacts tax evasion via changing individuals’ tax morale attitudes. In that, higher tax morale leads to lower levels of tax evasion. Finally, the analysis demonstrates that tax morale attitudes and tax evasion levels differ significantly in developed countries versus in-transition or developing countries. In addition, the impact of these cultural variables and economic variables on tax morale and tax evasion differ depending on a country’s economic development.

This study further develops an understanding of how various cultural variables and economic variables impact tax evasion. Such that, some of the variables change tax morale attitudes which impacts tax evasion while other variables impact tax evasive behavior directly. This more holistic model can be used by researchers to further explore tax evasion behavior in an international context.

Policy makers should take note of this study when developing strategies to mitigate tax evasive behavior. Specific country characteristics, such as culture and economic structure, will impact how individuals respond to policy (e.g., new laws or penalties).

This study aims to examine the competitiveness of firms operating in the emerging economy of Brazil. This study examines the current perception of Brazilian business leaders regarding the level of competitiveness in various sectors of industrial activity and the country’s business environment.

Survey data were collected in a joint study developed by Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration (EBAPE) and the Brazilian Institute of Economics (IBRE). The population surveyed was composed of businessmen, managers and directors of Brazilian manufacturing firms. This survey was created based on a similar survey conducted by the Harvard Business School, which was also aimed at identifying the reasons behind national loss of competitiveness.

The results of the survey point out that the worsening competitive nature of companies operating in Brazil can be primarily attributed to the deterioration of its country-specific advantages and in particular those linked to government policies, services and bureaucratic procedures, all of which bear a negative impact on the country’s business environment.

Future research should explore in more depth the specific types of initiatives that these firms have and are continuing to eagerly adopt with the aim of improving their domestic competitiveness and, namely, firm-specific advantages, whether it be by contributing to the improvement of the business environment as a whole, or by improving their own operations and management systems.

The main obstacles related to competitiveness are associated with the “Brazil Cost”, namely, the tax system, infrastructure, political system, labor laws and bureaucracy that do not appear to offer much room for maneuvering in terms of reducing these barriers in the short term. Managers not addressing these important input factors of competitiveness not only divert attention away from innovation and creativity but also could lead to more serious political, social welfare and economic implications in the global marketplace.

This study helps to gain a better understanding of the initiatives that could and are being used to contribute to a fruitful discussion about leading public policies and government actions geared toward upgrading Brazil’s business environment and country competitiveness as a whole.

This research contributes to the understanding of the initiatives that could and are being used to improve firm competitiveness in Brazil. These initiatives contribute to a fruitful discussion about leading public policies and government actions geared toward upgrading Brazil’s business environment and country competitiveness as a whole.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how The Competitive Advantage of Nations project led by Professor Michael E. Porter has opened up new perspectives on competitiveness of nations and firms for scholars, practitioners and policymakers. With the publication of The Competitive Advantage of Nations (CAON) book in 1990, Professor Michael E. Porter opened up a whole new perspective on competitiveness and clusters, including both new research avenues and new perspectives for practitioners and politicians. By questioning the traditional, more static and macroeconomic, views on competitiveness, he opened up for a new model of microeconomic drivers of long-run firm competitiveness. The new conceptual model, the Diamond model, pointed to the importance of healthy rivalry and dynamic clusters, in the proximate firm environment, as central to our understanding of how firms build sustainable competitive advantages in global markets.

Literature review and conceptual.

To distinguish between short-term, more static, and long-term, more dynamic competitiveness of firms, and the competitiveness of nations and regions, the paper proposes a conceptualization into three interrelated concepts: competitiveness and innovativeness of firms, and attractiveness of nations and regions.

This paper summarizes 40 years of Professor Porter’s seminal research with a focus on the CAON project that began with the 1990 book on The Competitive Advantage of Nations. The paper proposes three interrelated concepts to cover issues of competitiveness: competitiveness (firm’s static advantages), innovativeness (firm’s dynamic advantages) and attractiveness (national/regional advantages).

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper was to measure the efficiency of resource utilization across OECD countries aiming to verify that higher levels of competitiveness enhance the production capacity – the maximum possible output of an economy in a given period with the available resources.

The author used a two-stage procedure to first estimate the cross-sectional efficiency scores of 18 OECD economies by data envelopment analysis, and then to assess the impact of contextual variables on efficiency running regressions in the second-stage analysis. In particular, in the second stage, the author examined the effects of competitiveness on the production efficiency of the countries, while controlling for other independent variables.

The results confirmed that the higher the level of competitiveness, innovation and sophistication factors predominantly, the higher the level of productive efficiency of the countries analyzed.

The paper is novel because it opens the black box of the aggregate process of production of the conversion of resources into a national product. From the social point of view, it is relevant to know if a country could produce more output with the same resources, such as labor and capital and, therefore, could increase per capita income and social welfare.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the contribution of the Porter Report toward increasing the competitiveness of the Portuguese economy and highlights the factors that affected its operationalization.

This paper considers the contributions of the Porter Report, entitled “Building the Competitive Advantages of Portugal”, presented in 1994, particularly with regard to the recommended clusters and public policies, as well as the assessment and warnings provided by Michael Porter in 2002, examining both in the present perspective.

Although Michael Porter, in 2002, made a critical judgment about the country’s evolution since the 1994 report, it is clear that, on the one hand, the recommended development model attracted high attention and had positive repercussion in academic and business circles, while on the other hand, some of the objectives were achieved, albeit at a slower pace than would have been desirable. Political and economic context and the time period are relevant for all technological and geostrategic changes, among others. The accuracy of the diagnosis and the development model proposed by Michael Porter is confirmed and the difficulty in its implementation is highlighted.

The analysis of the Portuguese evolution after Porter’s recommendations is instrumental in understanding the competitiveness and development challenges faced by a small peripheral economy in the European integration process. Understanding these difficulties and successes is of utmost importance in improving the definition and in the implementation of policies focused on the competitiveness of countries and regions.

Among developing countries, the Republic of China in Taiwan (hereinafter Taiwan) has been experiencing economic growth accompanied by improving income distribution. Between 1964 and 1980, the average annual growth rate of the real gross national product was 9.92 per cent (Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD), 1982, p. 23). In the same period, the income ratio between the top 20 per cent and the bottom 20 per cent of families dropped from 5.33 to 4.17 and the Gini coefficient decreased from 0.36 to 0.30 (CEPD, 1982, p. 54; Directorate‐General of Budget Accounting and Statistics, 1980, (DGBAS), p. 44). To put it somewhat dif‐ferently, in 1964 the lowest fifth of households received 7.71 per cent of total personal income, and the highest fifth 41.07 per cent. But in 1980, the income share of the lowest fifth increased to 8.82 per cent while that of the highest fifth decreased to 36.80 per cent. The condition of greater equality in income distribution appears more obvious in the capital city of Taipei. In 1981, for instance, its Gini coefficient was estimated to be only 0.28 (Taipei Bureau of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, 1981, (TBBAS), P. 24).