Daniel Piazolo is an economist at Financial and Economic Research International (FERI) in Bad Homburg, Germany. He holds a doctoral degree from the University of Kiel, Germany, and was a research associate at the Kiel Institute for World Economics for six years before joining FERI in mid-2002. His recent book on European integration, The Integration Process between Eastern and Western Europe (Springer, 2001), based on his doctoral thesis, received the 2002 award of the European Association of Comparative Economic Studies (EACES).