C43 - Index Numbers and Aggregation; Leading indicatorsReturn

The article presents an alternative method to growth accounting. It makes it possible to express the effect of change in the quantity of inputs as well as the effect of the productivity of inputs (i.e. technological changes) on the change of GDP for all possible typologies of input/output changes. Unlike the growth accounting, this method is universal and also accurate; it may be applied not only to small growth rates. Dynamic parameters of intensity and extensity could be delivered as the output of the method. The first one captures the effect of change in the summary productivity of factors, while the latter captures changes in the input quantity. The dynamic parameters were calculated for the development of GDP in the United States and China for a period of fifty years (1960-2011). In case of the United States, it was also calculated how the development of labor and the development of capital contribute to the change in inputs. The calculated values verify that the method can reliably capture significant changes that took place in the given countries in individual years. The growth rate of the summary productivity of factors calculated on the basis of our method only differs slightly from the growth rate of the summary productivity of factors calculated on the basis of growth accounting. For all the aforementioned reasons, the method appears to be a suitable instrument for analyzing the GDP development.

In this short paper there will be introduced the stream of economic theory labelled as the New Economic Geography (NEG) and derived the core-periphery model, a flagship of the NEG. It is a model of two regions with imperfect competition and increasing returns to scale, where some properties of the model contrast certain features of basic neoclassic models of regional economics and international trade. The role of monopolistic competition and increasing returns to scale opens the possibility of highly nonlinear effects of production location with respect to barriers of trade. I analyze main mechanisms of the model and discuss the relevance of the NEG for economic policy in the context of European economic integration.

The article asks whether a paradox of new members comes into being during the EU enlargement. The first chapter defines the paradox of new members and examines its frequency in political communities. The second chapter introduces practical examples of the paradox and specifies voting power indicators in the EU. The third chapter brings empirical results - frequency of the paradox during EU enlargement. The fourth chapter tests some hypotheses and defines a disproportionality index. The fifth chapter summarizes conclusions.

The article is concerned with voting indicators in the European Union. The first chapter constructs a model of voting power and defines four indicators: A. Simple relative power, B. Shapley-Shubik index, C. Banzhaf index, D. Coleman index. The second chapter defines data: the voting structure according the Nice Treaty and nine algorithms - variants of the EU enlargement. The third chapter summarizes empirical results. The fourth chapter discusses statistical relations between voting indicators. The fifth chapter brings conclusions.