European politics has provided clear signals: the next round in the process of EU enlargement with the accession of the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) will come. Since expectations concerning the costs and benefits of integration are varied, it is our aim to contribute to this...

The object of this paper is to estimate the effect of European Union eastwards enlargement process on trade patterns in the Union. In particular, we intend to investigate whether and how the EU Free Trade agreements with CEECs have exerted a different impact on centre-periphery and...

In this paper we argue that strong political economy forces explain the rush of the EU to expand eastwards. We use a model of vertical product differentiation in order to claim that technologically- advanced EU firms (residing in high-income member countries) prefer a mutual market-opening with...