In this paper the Balassa steps of economic integration are first reviewed, and then extended to cover currernt integration configurations. Pre-conditions for each stage of integration are detailed using a backward-looking economic conditionality approach, and then both economic and political...

Protection of the Single Market, monetary integration, institutional and pol - icy reform, as well as enlargement are hot topics in the European Union. This article considers only the economic dimension of the enlargement. Five coun - tries with economies in transition (the Czech Republic,...

This paper investigates empirically the economic feasibility of monetary integration in East Asia. A structural VAR model is employed to decompose real output, real exchange rate and price level into a lagged polynomial of supply, demand and monetary shocks. The shocks are identified through the...

This study examines the feasibility of economic integration in Latin America. We analyze the existence of the long-term and short-term common movements among key macro variables—real GDP, intra-regional trade, private investment and consumption—in the seven largest economies in Latin...

East Asian countries have experienced dynamic structural change in regional trade during the 1990s. While intra-regional trade rapidly progressed within the region after the financial crisis, Asia accounts for a large portion of inter-regional trade volume, even after the crisis. In this paper,...

This paper examines the qualitative impact and the degree of effectiveness of several labor market policies when domestic union’s wage response and economic integration are explicitly taken into account. The employment policies considered include payroll tax cuts, unemployment benefits cuts,...

This study re-assesses regional integration by taking new measures for the degree of openness into account. The value-added based economic integration (VEI) model which improves on traditional economic integration models forms the core of these openness indicators. We show that a shift from the...

This paper investigates empirically the extent to which the ten new EU countries are ready to join the European Monetary Union (EMU). Using France and Germany as a benchmark, we assess the prospects of successful EMU participation based on common trends analysis of the nominal convergence...

This paper studies co-movements in real output growth across countries of Latin America in the sample period 1970-2007. To detect the change over time, correlations in real growth are analyzed over two sub-samples: 1970-1986 and 1987-2007. Correlation coefficients detect co-movements in real...

This paper quantifies the interdependence in labor markets that exists in the Mercosur countries. Two sets of panel data are constructed: one formed by the aggregation of annual time series data from Argentina and Brazil, and another with data from Uruguay and Paraguay. These two sets of data...