Europe’s economy is finally growing robustly. These positive developments provide an opportunity to renew efforts to meet the long-term challenges facing the European Union (EU). The EU’s record on reducing regional income disparities is mixed and this explains some of citizens’ discontent...

We define and construct 'integration' for a large sample of 2287 US banks-measured by their level of exposure to common factors-during the period 1993-2019. Integration among US banks shows a steady increase and displays significantly high peaks during episodes of market distress such as the...

We define and measure integration among a sample of 357 US banks over 25 years from 1993 to 2017 and show that the median US bank's integration has increased significantly post-2005. During the great recession and the Eurozone crisis, integration levels among US banks display a significant rise...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether the Asia Pacific region could form a union similar to the one now established in Europe. To this end, it analyses some of the major challenge faced by the US prior to its union in the 19th century and the way countries such as France and Germany...