Recent events, historical evidence and geographical proximity suggest that the six EFTAns and twelve Central and East European countries (CEECs) are natural trading partners. This paper evaluates this suggestion by estimating the potential for EFTA-CEEC trade using the gravity model of Wang and...

Economic thinking on regionalism has traditionally focused on the Vinerian question: Would a nation gain from joining a trade bloc? Since 1991, "Big Think Regionalism" considers the broader question of regionalism’s impact on the world trading system focusing on two questions: Does spreading...

In this paper, we evaluate the impact of Turkey's membership on EU voting. The aspects that we discuss are decision-making efficiency and the distribution of power in the EU's leading decision making body the Council of Ministers. We compare two alternative Council voting rules: those accepted...

Feedback mechanisms are the key to sequencing when it comes to regional integration. Feedback mechanisms can mean that today’s policy or institution alters the political economy landscape in a way that makes it politically optimal for future governments to take further steps towards...

A simple model of offshoring, which depicts offshoring as ‘shadow migration,’ permits straightforward derivation of necessary and sufficient conditions for the effects on wages, prices, production and trade. We show that offshoring requires modification of the four classic international...

This paper uses detailed information on the latitude and longitude of conflict events in Sub-Saharan African countries to study the impact of external income shocks on the likelihood of violence. We consider a number of external demand shocks faced by the countries or the regions within...

This paper studies empirically the impact of mining on conflicts in Africa. Using novel data, we combine geo-referenced information over the 1997-2010 period on the location and characteristics of violent events and mining extraction of 27 minerals. Working with a grid covering all African...

Trade is measured on a gross sales basis while GDP is measured on a net sales basis, i.e. value added. The rapid internationalisation of production in the last two decades has meant that gross trade flows are increasingly unrepresentative of value added flows. This fact has important...

Using a French firm-level database that combines balance-sheet and product-destination-specific export information over the period 1995-2001, we study the interconnections between exports and domestic sales. We identify exogenous shocks that affect the firms' demand on foreign markets to...

Using a French firm-level database that combines balance-sheet and product-destination-specific export information over the period 1995-2001, we study the interconnections between exports and domestic sales. We identify exogenous shocks that affect the firms' demand on foreign markets to...