Anamaria Sova

Environmental Regulation and Competitiveness: Evidence from Romania

According to the pollution haven hypotheses differences in environmental regulation affect trade flows and plant location. Specifically, environmental stringency should decrease exports and increase imports of dirty goods. This paper estimates a gravity model to establish whether the implementation of more stringent regulations in Romania has indeed affected its competitiveness and decreased exports towards its European trading partners. Our findings do not provide empirical support to the pollution haven hypothesis, i.e. environmental stringency is not found to affect significantly total trade, or its components (pollution intensive trade and pollution intensive trade related to non-resource-based trade).

European free trade agreements and trade balance: Evidence from four new European Union members

This article analyses the trade balance effects of Europe agreements (EA) between the EU-15 and four new EU members from Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC-4) using both static and dynamic panel data approaches. Specifically, the system generalised method of moments (GMM, Blundell, R., and S. Bond. 1998. Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models. Journal of Econometrics 87, no. 1: 115–43) and recently developed econometric methods such as the Correlated Common Estimation Pooled–Hausman-Taylor (CCEP–HT, Serlenga, L., and Y. Shin. 2007. Gravity models of intra-EU trade: Application of the CCEP-HT estimation in heterogenous panels with unobserved common time-specific factors. Journal of Applied Econometrics 22: 361–81) are applied to analyse the effects of the agreement variable. Our estimation results indicate a positive and significant impact of EA on trade flows. However, there is an asymmetric impact of the agreement variable on the trade balance, exports and imports being affected in different ways, which results in a trade balance deficit in the CEEC-4.

Financial Development and its Effects on Economic Growth: A Dynamic Analysis

The relationship between financial development and economic growth has been extensively analyzed in the literature. A particular case is that of the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), where reforming the banking sector was the first step toward financial development. The transformation of the banking sector has been one of the most important aspects of the transition process from a centrally planned to a market economy. This chapter examines the relationship between financial development and economic growth in these countries by estimating a dynamic panel model over the period 1994–2011. The results suggest that the stock and credit markets are still underdeveloped in these economies, and that their contribution to economic growth is limited owing to a lack of financial depth. By contrast, a more efficient banking sector is found to have accelerated growth.

The finance–growth nexus: evidence from ten new EU members

What is the link between the financial cycle – financial booms, followed by busts – and the real economy? What is the direction of this link and how salient is this connection? This unique book examines these fundamental questions and offers a paramount contribution to the debate surrounding the recent financial and economic crisis.