While the case for Spanish and Portuguese EC membership is largely political, for membership to be a political success it must also be an economic success. Indeed it is economic factors which have ensured that six years after the applications were made, negotiations have not been concluded and...

The creation of a single currency is deemed to produce further heterogeneity in regional trade, as regions differ in their exposure to trade with other European countries. It is possible to disentangle two separate effects on bilateral trade, namely the “exchange rate volatility effect”...