The EU Single Market remains fragmented by complex and heterogeneous rules at the EU and national levels affecting trade, capital, including foreign direct investment, and labour mobility. Further development of the Single Market and removing barriers to external trade would bring substantial...

We consider the regulation of national firms in a common market. Regulators can influence the production of national firms but they incur in a positive cost of public funds. First, we show that market integration is welfare improving if and only if the efficiency gains compensate for the...

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 investigate whether and how economic integration increases state capacity. This important relationship has not been studied in detail so far. We put together a conceptual framework to guide our analysis that highlights what we call the Montesquieu, Weber and Smith channels. Each of these...

The East African Community (EAC) is working towards establishing deeper integrationbetween its six partner states. The EAC partner states are: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda,South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. This paper analyses the lessons the EuropeanUnion may offer the EAC in guarding against base...

We investigate whether and how economic integration increases state capacity. This important relationship has not been studied in detail so far. We put together a conceptual framework to guide our analysis that highlights what we call the Montesquieu, Weber and Smith channels. Each of these...

This paper considers the integration of economies as a merger of populations. The premise is that the merger of groups of people alters their social landscape and their comparators. The paper identifies the effect of the merger on aggregate distress. A merger is shown to increase aggregate...

Against a theoretical background which recognizes the gains from trade liberalization, this paper asks whether, and if so to what extent, economic integration as directly measured through vertically integrated value-added has increased or reduced convergence among European industries and related...

In this paper, I study the impact of financial integration on between-firm wage inequality using an unbalanced panel for 20 European countries over the period 1999-2021. With the impulse response functions estimated using local projections, I find that financial integration, as measured by the...