This paper analyses the trade balance effects of Europe agreements (EA) between the EU-15 and four new EU members from Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC-4) using both static and dynamic panel data approaches. Specifically, the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM, Blundell and Bond, 1998)...

We study how the EU enlargement in 2004 and the Great Recession in the late 2000s have shaped the scale and composition of migration flows from the New Member States to Germany. We demonstrate that immigration increased substantially despite the restrictions on the German labor market, and that...

The analysis presented in this paper defines three different synthetic measurements of disincentives for formal work: two standard measurements, namely the tax wedge and the marginal effective tax rate (METR); and a new, innovative measurement called formalization tax rate (FTR). The novelty of...

Ireland, along with Sweden and the UK, allowed full access to its labour market to the citizens of the accession countries when the EU enlarged in May 2004. Given the limited number of countries that opened up and the rapid pace of economic growth in Ireland around 2004, a significant inflow was...

This paper briefly reviews the existing literature on potential migration into the enlarged European Union, reconciles the results with recent evidence and presents an additional migration scenario. The estimation procedure accounts for both sending and receiving countries' unobserved...

The enlargement of the European Union has increased concerns about the role of generous welfare transfers in attracting migrants. This paper explores the issue of welfare migration across the 15 countries of the pre-enlargement Union and finds a significant but small effect of the generosity of...

We investigate whether and how economic integration increases state capacity. This important relationship has not been studied in detail so far. We put together a conceptual framework to guide our analysis that highlights what we call the Montesquieu, Weber and Smith channels. Each of these...

For decades, countries aspiring to join the European Union (EU) have been linked to it through migration. Yet little is known about how migration affects individual support for joining the EU in prospective member states. We explore the relationship between migration and support for EU accession...

This paper investigates the labour market and welfare changes experienced by enlarged-EU migrants before and after 2007. For this purpose, we briefly review the Spanish socio-economic institutional background, as well as its migration policy towards enlarged-EU citizens. Then we discuss the...