Regional economic integration through logistics, information network and connectivity improvement can increase the 'virtual size' of an economy as trade with neighboring countries increases. This leads to substantial benefits from scale, network, coordination and agglomeration economies. As is...

Measured by trade in intermediate inputs, economic integration has increased between 2000 and 2014 between members of the European Union and even more with non-members. Integration is negatively related to economic size and positively to the number of years as a member. Germany is the largest...