Eastern European and Former Soviet Union countries diverged massively. Institutions are a main reason. The EU anchor thesis … posits that the prospect of membership in the European Union (EU) played a key role in filling in the institutional vacuum …, focusing on whether the prospect of EU membership accelerated institutional development and, if so, whether this was indeed …

This paper explores the impact of EU membership on foreign direct investment (FDI). It analyses empirically how the … gravity framework on annual bilateral FDI data for almost every country in the world, over 1985-2018, we find EU membership … leads FDI into the host economy to be about 60% higher for investment from outside the EU, and around 50% higher for intra-EU …