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Die lockere Geldpolitik der EZB wird von vielen dafür kritisiert, dass sie den Sparern schade. Die Evidenz spricht aber dafür, dass die EZB-Politik zwar die Tendenz zu niedrigen Zinsätzen verstärkt haben mag. Grundsätzlich sind die niedrigen Zinssätze aber durch den weltweiten Kapitalüberschuss verursacht. Dieser wiederum ist entstanden, weil Realinvestitionen in der EU im Vergleich zum Kapitalangebot zu niedrig sind und verunsichernde weltwirtschaftliche Verwerfungen zu niedrigeren Wachstumsraten führen, weil Staatsdefizite abgebaut werden und weil eine zunehmend ungleiche Einkommens- und Vermögensverteilung zu höheren Ersparnissen führt.

Slow post-crisis total factor productivity growth is a significant policy challenge for many European countries in general and for Hungary in particular. This report aims at providing a comprehensive analysis of the processes behind productivity growth slowdown in Hungary based on micro data from administrative sources between 2001 and 2016. In particular, the report aims to contribute to four ongoing debates: First, it attempts to document the productivity growth slowdown in detail to uncover potential sources of heterogeneity. The second overarching question, related to frontier and non-frontier firms, is the idea of the so-called duality in Hungary. The concept of duality emphasises the large differences in terms of productivity and wages between globally oriented, often foreign-owned, large firms and the rest of the economy. Duality also refers to the lack of interconnectedness between these two groups of firms, in terms of supplier-buyer linkages and worker flows, which limits positive intergroup spillovers. The third group of questions relates to how efficiently resources are allocated across firms. Similarly to other countries, within-industry productivity differences are at least a magnitude larger than between-industry differences. This implies that the efficiency of the allocation of resources within an industry (i.e., whether more productive firms have access to more labour and capital) matters much for aggregate productivity. Finally, the report is interested in the extent to which sectors and industries differ in terms of productivity and firm dynamics.

This paper analyses the impact of the European Union's Cohesion Policy on firm growth in the programming period 2007-2013 in seven European countries. Results show that Cohesion Policy support promotes firm growth in size (value added and employment) more than in productivity. However, even when the policy is the same and similar projects and beneficiaries are considered, its effectiveness varies across different territorial contexts, among but also within countries. In several cases, the impact of grants on firm growth is larger in regions with lower income or scant endowments of territorial assets, most likely because firms in those regions cannot rely on external assets.

The aim of this case study was to conduct a participatory approach to socioeconomic scenario development in the city of Lienz (East Tyrol) and to suggest this process-oriented approach as an element of an integrated guiding and decision support tool for local resilience and risk management to policy makers, business leaders, and civil society. The paper takes a socio-economic perspective and describes the settings of the case study, the process, and approach taken for co-creating two distinct normative socio-economic scenario narratives for the city of Lienz: a desirable or resilient future and an undesirable or stagnant future. Results are presented as sector-specific scenario narratives. Matching the local scenario narratives with the global shared socioeconomic pathways, it derives that local peculiarities such as population decline due to outmigration trends or decentralised manufacturing industry and educational institutions were judged to be critical factors in securing local resilience for a prospering future.

Chapter 10, "Diversification patterns at the regional level and their relationship to regional knowledge capabilities: differences between advanced and less favoured regions" (Andreas Reinstaller and Fabian Unterlass) analyses the relationship between regional capabilities to generate and apply knowledge and changes in industrial specialisation in advanced and less-favoured regions. The results suggest that local technological search and learning reinforce existing specialisation patterns, whereas educational investments weaken path dependence. They reduce the importance of local capabilities to generate comparative advantages and allow tapping into new technologies or industries fostering diversification. Regions with higher educational attainment levels tend also to be more specialised in high-end markets. The educational system therefore plays a key role in diversification processes and should be a constitutive element of S3 policies.

Chapter 13, "Regional structural policies and industrial evolution: evidence from three European case study regions" (Klaus S. Friesenbichler) addresses the question of why some less-favoured regions escaped their structural problems, while others did not. It provides case study evidence on three EU regions that have faced structural challenges at some point in recent history: Styria in Austria, Bucharest Ilfov in Romania and Valencia in Spain. Both regional economic policies and the evolution of the industry structures are discussed against an evolutionary economics background, focusing on path dependence, diversification processes and human capital formation. The findings suggest a series of conclusions for smart specialisation policies aimed at escaping structural lock-ins.

Chapter 12, "Relatedness, diversification and economic performance at the regional level: differences between advantaged and less favoured regions" (Johanna Vogel and Stefan Weingärtner) examines empirically the effect of regional diversification patterns on economic performance in relation to the regional level of economic development in the European Union. It does so using data for a panel of EU regions covering the period from 2008 to 2011. The aim is to investigate whether "related" and "unrelated" diversification (variety) affect economically advantaged and less favoured regions differently, and thus to provide insights for the EU's smart specialisation approach to cohesion policy. The findings highlight the growth-enhancing impact of diversification into unrelated areas of activity in production and knowledge (unrelated variety) for economically less favoured regions.

The paper analyses the potential of a surcharge on national fuel taxes as sustainability-oriented own resource to finance the EU budget. Our estimations show that such a surcharge could yield substantial revenues, ranging between 12.93 billion € (for a surcharge of 0.03 €) and 86.2 billion € (for a surcharge of 0.2 €) per year. Besides the contribution an EU fuel tax would make to various sustainability-related EU goals and strategies, it would help to address two specific problems inherent in the current EU system of fuel taxation. An EU fuel tax designed as a surcharge on national fuel taxes would decrease the existing tax bias in favour of diesel, as the surcharge would be levied uniformly on gasoline and diesel, which in most EU countries is taxed at lower rates, alike. Moreover, by increasing national fuel tax rates, the surcharge would – depending on its level – mitigate or even remove the "under-taxation" of fuel in relation to the minimum fuel tax rates stipulated in the EU Energy Tax Directive in a number of EU member countries, which is caused by the absence of regular inflation adjustment of nominal fuel tax rates.