The past decade has dramatically shaped the European economic landscape. After the global financial and economic crisis of 2008/09 hit the continent, the southern European periphery exemplified by Greece experienced a strongly diverging economic development. As capital inflows from the North...

The three essays of this dissertation contribute to the measurement of European economic integration and investigate the welfare effects of the European countries. The first study presents a newly developed index – the EU Index – which measures the extent of economic integration into the...