From the Zollverein to the Economics of Regionalism

The paper is a contribution to the special issue “150 years Journal of Economics and Statistics”. The starting point is a series of articles on the nature and the history of the German Zollverein by Gustav Fischer in the early volumes of the Journal. Both the perception of the Zollverein and the economics of preferential trade are traced over time. The focus is on the analogies between the Zollverein and the European Community and on the expansion of the Zollverein in view of the modern theory of sequencing in forming a trade bloc.