This paper develops a model of the circumstances under which it is beneficial to participate in a currency area. The proposed two-country monetary model of trade with nominal rigidities encompasses the real and monetary arguments suggested by the optimum currency area literature: correlation of...

The ongoing process of European integration is likely to increase trade and factor mobility thereby increasing interregional competition and affecting the interregional division of labor. From a theoretical standpoint, rising specialization and polarization of European regions may result from...

The European Unions's task of providing Trans-European Networks (TENs) in transportation, communications and energy transmission which has been enacted by the treaty of Maastricht, is not confined to internal networks in the EU. Since 1994 this task has been widened so as to give support to the...

The paper analyzes one important aspect of the constitutional debate: the allocation of econornie competences between the EU and the mernber states. It takes the theory of fiscal federalism as a starting point for an optimal allocation of economic competences. The main message of the theory is...

The member states of the European Union have given up sovereignty in quite a number of policy areas and subjected themselves to joint decisionmaking at the European level. Policy instruments are no longer available nationally in many policy areas, including monetary policy, trade policy, the...

Although an extensive amount of literature reviews emerging patterns of east-west co-operation, it is not easy to grasp the state of the art. Too many of the books, articles and papers tend to mark the trees rather than to map the forest. The paper analyses recent trends from the point of view...

This paper studies the concept of an international economic order, i.e. an institutional arrangement of international rules. Such rules emerge from negative experiences – historical disasters – that inflict severe hardship on people. A taxonomy for rules reducing transaction costs is...

This paper examines the transition process within Eastern Europe and the integration process with the EU and shows that the requirements for the transition towards a market economy overlap with the requirements for EU accession. Furthermore, the economic situation of the candidate countries is...

This paper analyzes how international rules are established and stabilized, i.e. how an international institutional order develops. Rules emerge mainly through learning from negative experience and serve to reduce transaction costs. The paper looks at mechanisms that stabilize rule systems, at...

Because of large economic and environmental asymmetries among world regions and the incentive to free ride, an international climate Regime with broad participation is hard to reach. Most of the so far proposed Regimes base on an allocation of emission rights that is to be perceived as fair....