The Middle East was once seen as a medieval great globalized force. Nowadays it shows one of the lowest intra-regional trade in the world and therefore it is claimed that the region is poorly integrated. Yet, with the steady .ow of workers across national borders of the Middle East is this...

After World War II, town twinning became popular, notably in Germany. This was mainly a reaction to the war experience, and it was aimed at creating renewed international understanding and co-operation between German cities and cities in other countries. The contacts created by town twinning...

I develop a political economy theory of dynamic fiscal competition via public spending and debt. With internationally mobile capital, strategic policies generate two cross-border externalities that voters in each country fail to internalize: (1) an increase in public spending that bolsters...

We show that the creation of the first integrated pan-European transport network during Roman times influences economic integration over two millennia. Drawing on spatially highly disaggregated data on excavated Roman ceramics, we document that interregional trade was strongly influenced by...

When did Germany become economically integrated? Within the framework of a gravity model, based on a new data set of about 40,000 observations on trade flows within and across the borders of Germany over the period 1885-1933, I explore the geography of trade costs across Central Europe. There...

A wide variety of social protection systems coexist within the EU. Some member states provide social insurance that is of Beveridgean inspiration (with universal and more or less flat benefits), while others offer a system that is mainly Bismarckian (with benefits related to past contributions)....

Most FDI takes place between the developed countries, which suggests that the market-seeking motive is important for understanding FDI. However, given the stylized fact that trade barriers (e.g. transportation costs and financial barriers) have declined over the past 20 years, models that aim to...

In this article, we study the effects of geopolitical risks and world uncertainty on time-varying fiscal and external sustainability coefficients. We use Schlicht's (2021) methodology to estimate time-varying fiscal and external sustainability coefficients for the EU for 27 economies between...

This study aims to scrutinize the change of public revenue systems of the EU-15 between 1980 and 2016. The share of consumption taxes in total tax revenues increases and this process have triggered higher tax burden on labor in most of the EU countries via indirect taxation. In this study I use...

We develop a theory of economic disintegration with both endogenously formed tax and trade policies. We show very generally that, contrary to conventional wisdom, a country’s disintegration from an integrated area leads to a deeper integration inside the area. Similarly, the departure of a...