GRASP · Growth And Sustainability Policies for Europe

Growth And Sustainability Policies for Europe (GRASP) addresses European policy concerns associated with growth within a comprehensive yet coherent analytical framework. This framework is built on Aghion’s version of the Schumpeterian growth approach. It emphasizes quality-improving innovation in imperfectly competitive markets, but suggests optimal growth policy may depend as well on levels of technological (and financial) development, and on seemingly unrelated, yet relevant policies. The approach provides a multi-layered vision of the policy drivers of growth. The five layers address gaps in current European research on growth: R&D (the Lisbon focus); structural economic reform; legal, institutional and organizational reforms; global commitments, and the fiscal policy. The first layer focuses on economic assessments of innovation (property rights and incentive issues). The structural economic reform layer focuses on sectoral (infrastructure, education and social) and regional policies. The third layer examines the interactions between the law, institutions, and the drivers of innovation. Global commitment looks at trade policies and global environmental commitments. The fiscal layer focuses on government finance of any public good component of these layers and their effectiveness in contributing to growth. Each layer provides a multidisciplinary diagnostic of the quality of growth-related policies. Combining them allows us to construct a full “Schumpeterian growth diagnostic” to assess the effectiveness of public policies, and the adequacy and sustainability of growth in Europe. The GRASP consortium brings together theorists, applied econometricians, and institutional (law, politics and economics) researchers to pursue complementary, state-of-the-art analyses. CEPR’s unrivalled expertise in organizing pan-European research collaboration further strengthens the GRASP consortium.