Europe and Asia followed very different paths to economic integration after 1945. By 2000, an economic union with free movement of goods and factors of production and a common currency linked much of Europe. Meanwhile, effective economic integration agreements were absent from Asia, although...

"Richard Pomfret documents European integration since WWII, showing that today's European Union is the product less of master planning than of responses to political and economic challenges. Nevertheless, the EU emerges as a world-historic achievement in cross-border cooperation, with a bright...