Even when international product market integration is taking place between fairly similar countries with low labour mobility, it may have important effects for labour markets by increasing the mobility of jobs. This creates both opportunities through exports and threats from imports. Is there...

This paper introduces a new theoretical framework of international unions qua coalitions of countries adopting a common policy and common supranational institutions. We introduce a general class of non-cooperative spatial bargaining games of coalition formation among three countries in order to...

From a pure welfare economic viewpoint, there is no contradiction between a deepening and a widening of the EU. However, the analysis in this paper shows that the factual degree of deepening efforts within the EU by far exceeds the economically optimal one. Above all, the tendency of the...

With twelve new members the decision making in the European Union via intergovernmental cooperation will become ineffective. In order to avoid a Stagno-Europe the EU has a choice: Either it looks for the very essentials in the common institutional frame or the member states agree in ceding...

The ongoing process of European integration is likely to increase trade and factor mobility thereby increasing interregional competition and affecting the interregional division of labor. From a theoretical standpoint, rising specialization and polarization of European regions may result from...

Eastern Europe is in the midst of a radical change. In order to increase the chances of success of their Perestroika, the reformers, especially those from Hungary, Poland and the Soviet Union, are striving for closer links between their countries and the economically-advanced Western , Europe....

This study presents first a brief overview of the efforts towards creating a free trade area in Latin America (Chapter II); it then reviews the developments of preferential trade policies since the foundation of ALADI in 1980 (Chapter III) as well as the development and patterns of preferential...

The winds of change are blowing through Europe. In the western half of the divided continent the European Community (EC) is setting about to complete its Internal Market by the end of 1992, in the East various members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) are striving for a...