Talks@Bruegel: Trade barriers within the EU with Lorenzo Rotunno

As governments in the EU strive to implement policies to boost productivity and improve business dynamism, barriers to further integration of the single market have garnered increasing attention. The presentation focused on insights from the October 2024 IMF Regional Economic Outlook for Europe and in the related IMF Working Paper that document the firm-level roots of Europe’s widening productivity gaps. Following the overall diagnosis, the presentation focused on the assessment of the trajectory of intra-EU barriers to trade in goods and services and their current significance. The discussion analysed the empirical approaches employed in this assessment and how these related to the existing literature.