About the Project
The project Sharing Knowledge Assets: Interegionally Cohesive Neighbourhoods, SEARCH, is part of the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme.
The SEARCH project brings together 17 institutions, among them the London School of Economics (UK), the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands), the University of Thessaly (Greece), the University of Cagliari (Italy), Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria), Brunel University (UK), the University of Pécs (Hungary), the Moscow State University Higher School of Economics (Russia) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel). Also participating are the European Institute of the Mediterranean, the International Centre for Black Sea Studies and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey.
SEARCH focuses on the study of relations between EU countries and their neighbours, with particular attention paid to aspects such as movement of people, goods and knowledge to strengthen the ties between the European Union and surrounding nations, in Eastern Europe, the Near East and the southern Mediterranean region.
Latest Research
Latest research papers produced by the LSEE team in the frame of the FP7 project:
-- Skill Mismatch, Education Systems, and Labour Markets in EU Neighbourhood Policy Countries. According to models of endogenous growth, the skill levels of the workforce are an important driver of economic development. This paper investigates the ability of educational systems in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) region to provide a skilled workforce that is well matched to the changing needs of the labour market. Different patterns of skill mismatch can be expected in transition countries and emerging market countries. We identify an inverted-U pattern of mismatch across education groups with especially severe mismatch among secondary educated, especially those who graduate from vocational schools where curricula are inappropriate to the labour market needs and funding for new equipment is relatively constrained. In the emerging market economies we find some evidence that a quite different pattern of mismatch is present, with the highest rate of mismatch among highly educated university graduates, especially male graduates. This is partly due to different patterns of structural change and partly associated with demographic factors. Countries with high population growth rates may experience over-supply of educated school leavers; countries with falling populations may experience under-supply of both skilled and unskilled workers. There is also evidence of gender-biased mismatch in the emerging market economies of the ENP region. Among the main challenges to the development of effective skill matching systems and corresponding policy design in transition countries and emerging economies in the ENP countries are weak capacities of government institutions including the employment services, underfunding of state provided training services, slow reforms of the education systems and low level of in-house training by employers. There are also significant information gaps in many of the ENP countries, while there is also a greater need for information due to market uncertainty; yet at the same time there is a lack of administrative capacity for skills analysis, forecasting and anticipation. This paper, authored by Will Bartlett, was published in September 2013 as SEARCH Working Paper No 5/2. Click here| to read.
-- Local Governance and Social Cohesion in Ukraine. Local governance and social cohesion are important political principles which feature prominently in Ukrainian politics but there are many obstacles to their effective implementation. Despite many discussions about the need for the reform of local government, both in political institutions as well as in civil society, there is no political will to draft a plan and an action plan with a view to implement it. A divided political opposition and diminished civil society mean that there is little impetus to reform the system. The local political elite is still not able to take over the running of local government. The majority of them are still tuned into the centralised model and they do not have the political education to run their local councils independently. The process of centralization together with the economic recession and high levels of corruption is creating a fragmented society in which there are increasingly less connections between different groups in society. A discussion paper on the issue (Bartlett, W. and Popovski, V., 2013) was published in September 2013 as SEARCH working paper No 5/22 Click here|
-- Business Culture, Social Networks and SME Development in the EU Neighbourhood. In recent decades, economic growth in countries around the world has become increasingly dependent on the dynamism of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This is especially important in the transition economies of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) area in the context of economic crisis and rising unemployment. However, a number of problematic issues have acted to hold back the entry and growth of SMEs in the transition countries of the ENP region. The paper sets out an approach to analysing the development of SMEs in transition countries in the Eastern Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries with a focus on the Eastern Partnership region and in particular on Moldova and Ukraine. It was published in September 2013 (Bartlett, W., Popa, A., Popovski, V.) as SEARCH Working Paper 5/18 Click here|
-- Institutional Quality and Growth in EU Neighbouring Countries. The research has investigated the relationship between institutional reform and economic growth in the European neighbourhood policy (ENP) countries, and the extent to which formal and informal institutions have converged towards EU norms. A discussion paper on the issue (Bartlett, W., Čučković, N., Jurlin, K Imir, Nojković A., Popovski, V., 2013) was published in January 2013 as SEARCH Working Paper No 5/11 Click here|
-- Scope, motives and limitations of the European Neighbourhood Policy. This is a literature-based research examining the rationale and motives behind the establishment of the ENP and the historical and political-economic dynamics that have shaped its structure, priorities and instruments. A discussion paper on the issue (Monastiriotis and Borrell, 2012) was published in January 2012 as SEARCH Working Paper No1/05 click here| click here|
-- Impact of European integration and trade openness on regional disparities and growth. Using historical regional-level data on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, this research seeks to assess through panel-data econometric analysis (i) how institutional (e.g., events such as an association or accession agreement) and economic integration (captured by trade openness) impacts on regional economic performance and (ii) whether the latter is conditioned on region-specific characteristics (thus creating regional deviations from the average national effect).
-- Origin of FDI and productivity spillovers in the ENP region. Following the political and economic transformations that have occurred in the ENP region over the last 20 years (and more recently since the Arab Spring), capital inflows is becoming increasingly important for the ENP countries - and indeed are on a long-term upward trend. The type of foreign capital investments accruing to the region, however, varies significantly in relation to the origin of these investments (e.g., from Chinese versus European companies). In this research we use firm-level data to examine (a) whether the increasing capital inflows in the ENP region have a tractable productivity effect for the domestic economies; and (b) whether the type of FDI in the region that is accounted for by European companies is more, or less, conducive to domestic productivity compared to non-European FDI. Methodologically the analysis follows the work conducted for the case of Bulgaria by Monastiriotis and Alegria (2011) click here |
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