We evaluate potential costs and benefits of Eastern enlargement of the EU. In addressing fiscal costs of enlargement in addition to tariff and non-tariff barriers, we arrive at important conclusions: 1) Overall, extending EU membership to Eastern applicants is more than worth its price to...

This paper studies the generation and the transmission of international business cycles in a multi-country model with production and consumption interdependencies. Two sources of disturbances are considered and three channels for propagation of shocks are compared. Simulations are performed for...

I study whether and how US shocks are transmitted to eight Latin American countries. US shocks are identified using the procedure of Canova and De Nicolo’ (2002) and treated as exogenous with respect to Latin American economies. Posterior estimates for individual and average effects are...

This paper examines the question of which shock generates cyclical movements in output and inflation using an alternative approach. We find that in the G-7 countries output cycles are driven by different structural disturbances, that monetary disturbances play a significant role in at least four...

This paper presents a computable general equilibrium model of world trade, and applies the model to analyses of world trade and production effects of European integration. The main features of the model are: four world regions, twelve traded goods, one non-tradable aggregate in each region and...

This paper investigates the sources and size of trade barriers at the industry level. We derive a micro-founded measure of industry-specific bilateral trade integration that has an in-built control for time-varying multilateral resistance. This trade integration measure is consistent with a...

This Paper examines the impact of imported technologies on productivity for a sample of developing and transition countries in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Southern Mediterranean. These economies are getting more and more integrated to the European Union. The Paper departs from earlier...

This paper discusses the Europe Agreements, implicit trade preferences given to the Central and East European countries (CEECs) and their impact on European Community (EC) members. As expected, South European countries compete in the same range of products and in a more similar quality market...

We show that the standard concertina result for tariff reforms -- i.e. lowering the highest tariff increases welfare -- no longer holds in general if we allow for international capital mobility. The result can break down if the good whose tariff is lowered is not capital intensive. If the...

The paper reviews the likely economic effects of the Regional Economic Partnership Agreements (REPAs) proposed by the EU to the ACP countries to succeed to the Lomé IV agreements. We argue that, in spite of some likely positive effects because of reciprocity and because of the North-South...