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Partnership for Growth II: A Competitiveness Agenda for Connecticut

This report recommends decisive steps designed to propel Connecticut to the forefront of the global economy. These recommendations constitute a powerful, multifaceted strategy that will strengthen
the state’s small and midsize manufacturers, grow its innovative and technological capacity, reinvigorate its urban centers, enhance its economic foundations and continue to build upon the private-public collaboration that is already increasing Connecticut’s competitiveness in the global marketplace.

Variety and Regional Economic Growth in the Netherlands

Using data at the COROP level for the period 1996-2002, the authors find that Jacobs externalities enhance employment growth, while unrelated variety dampens unemployment growth. Productivity growth, by contrast, can be explained by traditional determinants including investments and R&D expenditures. Implications for regional policy in The Netherlands follow.

Americas Looming Creativity Crisis

To defend the U.S. economy, the business community must take the lead in ensuring that global talent can move efficiently across borders, that education and research are funded at radically higher levels, and that the U.S. tap into the creative potential of more and more workers, according to the author. Because wherever creativity goes, economic growth is sure to follow.

Regional Disparities in the European Union: Convergence and Agglomeration

Economic disparities between the regions of the European Union are of constant concern both for policy and economic research. In this paper, the authors analyse whether it has resumed and persisted in the 1990s when European integration made huge steps forward. They construct a typology of regions in order to examine whether there are overlapping trends of regional development.

China: International Trade and WTO Accession

Chinas increasing integration with the global economy has contributed to sustained growth in international trade. Its exports have become more diversified, and greater penetration of industrial country markets has been accompanied by a surge in Chinas imports from all regions-especially Asia, where China plays an increasingly central role in regional specialization. Tariff reforms have been implemented in China since the 1980s; and, with its recent WTO accession, China has committed itself to additional reforms that are farreaching and challenging.