We propose a comprehensive methodology to characterize the business cycle comovements across European economies and some industrialized countries, always trying to ‘let the data speak’. Out of this framework, we propose a novel method to show that there is no ‘Euro economy’ that acts as...

This paper explores the interactions between external trade and regional disparities in the Italian economy since unification. It argues that the advantage of the North was initially based on natural advantage (in particular the endowment of water, intensive in silk production). From 1880...

This paper examines the emergence and dynamics of border effects over time. We exploit the unique historical setting of the multinational Habsburg Empire prior to the Great War to explore the hypothesis that border effects emerged as a result of persistent trade effects of ethno-linguistic...

In his seminal publications between the 1930s and 1960s, Frederick Lane offered three hypotheses regarding the impact of the Voyages of Discovery that have guided debate ever since. First, pepper and other spice prices did not rise in European markets in the century before the 1490s, and thus...

This Paper exploits the unique experiment of European market integration to investigate the relationship between integration and price convergence in international markets. Using a panel data set of car prices we examine how the process of integration has affected cross-country price dispersion...

This paper analyses the consequences for the standard import allocation models of assuming monopolistic competition on the supply side. Together with relative prices, this requires additional variables to capture product differentiation effects. To this end, we derive a composite price index...

We examine the interaction between commodity taxes and parallel imports in a simple two-country model with imperfect competition. While governments determine non-cooperatively their commodity tax rate, the volume of parallel imports is determined endogenously by the retailing sector. We compare...

A major question in the literature on the classical gold standard concerns the efficiency of international arbitrage. Authors have examined efficiency by looking at the spread of the gold points, gold point violations, the flow of gold, or by tests of various asset market criteria, including...

The goal of this Paper is to provide an assessment of the EU policies that pursue the creation of a single banking market. The Paper evaluates the degree of integration of EU banking markets and discusses whether current policies are the most appropriate instruments for market integration. After...