This paper takes a welfare-view on eastern enlargement of the EU, focusing on incumbent countries. Enlargement is decomposed into three elements: Single-market integration on commodity markets, budgetary costs from EU-expenditure policies, and singlemarket- induced migration from new to present...

We study the impact of changing relative market access in an enlarged EU on the economies of incumbent Objective 1 regions. First, we track the impact of external opening on internal spatial configurations in a three-region economic geography model. External opening gives rise to potentially...

In spite of widespread tariff reductions, intra-African borders remain thick. Regional trade is inhibited by inadequate transportation infrastructure, but also by various government-imposed measures. This paper combines price data from the World Bank’s International Comparison Project (ICP)...

This paper assesses the impact of migration on export performances. In particular, it highlights and helps understand how African migrants foster African trade. Relying on a new dataset on international bilateral migration recently released by the World Bank spanning from 1980 to 2010, we...

The EAC is on the verge of establishing a customs union. But this is accompanied by fears that the Customs Union would lead to trade imbalances among the Partner States, which would create serious problems for the proper functioning of the Customs Union itself. To mitigate these problems the...

The main focus of this paper is the question if the success of regional integration organisation in developing countries is, in fact, dependent on factors like similarity of their economic structure, market size or lack of committment. It is shown that there are also other more important...

The European Union is currently negotiating free trade agreements, called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), with African countries as part of the Cotonou Agreement between the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. The paper empirically assesses the impact of the EPAs...

EU enlargement is supposed to entail profound impact on the location of economic activities in Europe. Although there is concern about the implications of enlargement for regional disparities in the EU, corresponding empirical results are still rare. The objective of this analysis is to provide...

The paper explores regional trade integration of the countries involved in the EU eastward enlargement (EU-25) processes distinguishing the possible regional trade clusters within EU-25 that may support integration of the EU-15 and the new member states. We examine whether the gravity equation...

The paper aims to explore international trade flows of the countries involved in the EU eastward enlargement processes – the current EU members (EU15) and the candidate countries (CC12). The empirical results of the study allow us to conclude that the behaviour of bilateral trade flows within...