Based on a many-industry Chamberlinian-Ricardian trade model with iceberg trade costs, this note examines the impact of two modes of economic integration: a reduction in trade costs, and technical standardization due to information spillover. It is shown that these two modes of economic...

This paper presents an empirical assessment of the endogenous optimum currency area theory. Frankel and Rose (1998) study the endogeneity of a currency union through the lens of international trade flows. Our study extends Frankel and Rose's model by using FDI flows to test the original theory...

In this qualitative sociological and quantitative economic policy paper, we start out from the assumption of a very recent European Commission Background paper on the “Efficiency and effectiveness of social spending”, which says the effectiveness of social spending can be defined by the...

This paper analyses in the framework of a 2-region economic geography model the impact of transfers on agglomeration of economic activity. Two main results can be derived: First, subsidies to the activity of firms are more efficient to avoid agglomeration than subsidies to consumers (social...

This study determines the effect of regional economic integration, namely the ASEAN Free Trade Area, on bilateral trade flows between the ASEAN-5 countries and their major trading partner, Japan. The analysis begins with the construction of a simple country-specific index based on the Common...

This paper investigates empirically the extend to which the ten new countries of the current EU enlargement are ready to join the European Monetary Union (EMU). We assess the prospects of successful accession into the EMU using cointegration and common trends analysis on the nominal convergence...

This paper examines the effects of a movement from segmented markets to integrated markets on the volume of trade, consumer prices, and profits in a monopoly model. The monopolist discriminates prices among segmented markets but takes account of arbitrage under integrated markets. The analysis...

There is now increasing recognition of the critical importance of trade facilitation to further international commerce, accelerate growth, and enhance welfare if not alleviate poverty among trading nations. But there is also increasing appreciation that it is not just attention to the barriers...

The current economic crisis has lent extra urgency to ASEAN’s efforts at economic integration and raising its attractiveness for trade and investment. This process gained momentum in the 1990s and has made much progress, as reflected in the emergence of a wide range of extra- and...