This paper examines the effects of enlargement of the European Union and the NAFTA on new and non-member countries. The empirical analysis is based on the applied general equilibrium model underlying the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), version 5. The paper shows that expansions of the two...

The 1990s witnessed the launching of two ambitious trade regionalization plans, the NAFTA and EU enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe. In contrast to previous projects for the creation or expansion of regional trade blocs, these two projects concerned states at dramatically different levels...

The European Union (EU) represents a large and highly integrated bloc which contributed 19.4% of global GDP and over 30% of global exports in 2012. As of July 1, 2013 it consists of 28 member states. All of them belong to the customs union and the Single European Market (SEM) in which most...

This paper analyses the rapid trade integration of the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) with the euro area in the past ten years and draws implications for further integration. We use as benchmark an enhanced gravity model estimated for a large sample of bilateral trade flows...

Galvanized by the devastation of the Second World War, European countries achieved a historically unprecedented and unparalleled level of regional economic integration in the postwar period. Intensive cooperation between the two biggest powers of continental Western Europe, France, and Germany,...

I develop an index for economic integration accounting for its gradual and bilateral nature: the Gradual And Bilateral Integration (GABI) index. The graduality captures differences in the depth and path of five stages in economic integration and is an improvement over the use of binary dummy...