We examine the incentives of regions in a country to unite or toseparate. We find that smaller regions have greater incentives tounite, relative to larger regions. We show, however, that on thewhole, majority voting on separation and union generates excessiveincentives to separate. This leads us...

There is general agreement at present that the Southern African Development Community needs to re-imagine itself and breathe new life into its somewhat moribund structure. The European Union is often presented as the textbook example to be followed by other regional associations - a rules-based,...

In recent years, Europe has witnessed an accelerated process of economic integration. Trade barriers were removed, the euro was introduced and ten new member states have joined the European Union. This paper analyzes how this process of increased economic integration has affected labor and...

Consider an environment in which ex-ante symmetric countries can form customs unions freely. What are the welfare effects on member and nonmember countries of the formation of welfare-maximizing customs unions? What are the properties of stable customs-union structures? Is a symmetric...

We explore the economic implications of the possible accession of Croatia to the European Union. We focus on two main changes associated with the EU-membership: accession to the internal European Market and institutional reforms in Croatia triggered by the EU-membership. consumption per capita...

This paper discusses the opportunities and challenges for Southern and Eastern African ACP countries of services negotiations in the context of European Partnership Agreements. The paper provides an overview of existing flows in services from and to Southern and Eastern Africa, an overview that...

This paper argues that different types of trade liberalization { multilateral versus regional { may lead to different R&D and productivity levels of firms. Trade agreements between countries are modelled with a network: nodes represent countries and a link between the nodes indicates the...

The well-known question whether regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the multilateral trading system (MTS) are "strangers, friends, or foes" (Bhagwati and Panagariya, 1996) has gained new importance with the widespread proliferation of RTAs in recent years. Based on an extensive data set which...

In this paper, we analyzed key aspects of the changing economic relationship between the European Union (EU) and Asia, and explored the potential economic ramifications of deeper EU-Asian economic cooperation. We also investigated the possible costs to the EU of remaining "disengaged" from the...