EU Integration and Outsiders. A Simulation Study of industrial Location.

This paper focuses on the location effects of preferential trade areas (PTA) on non-members. More specifically, using a CGE model calibrated to real data, it focuses on the impact of tighter European integration on outsider regions. We argue that because theoretical models analysing PTAs have very few contact points with reality, further research is needed to evaluate whether the effects highlighted by these models -catastrophic agglomeration and non-monotonic relocation, for example- are theoretical aberrations of highly specific models, or important effects that help us explain real world events.