This Paper analyses a hold-up problem in the EU enlargement process. EU-specific anticipatory investments of private firms lower the governments outside option. The EU takes advantage of the applicants' increased dependency and extracts more surpluses through entrance conditions that benefit it...

This Paper analyses the effects of a regionally coordinated profit tax in a model with three active countries, one of which is not part of the union, and a globally mobile firm. We show that regional tax coordination can lead to two types of welfare gains. First, for investments that would take...

We use a spatial model of endogenous growth to investigate the likely impact of discriminatory integration among two advanced insider countries on their own welfare as well as on the welfare of an outsider transition economy. A first point is that, since convergence in per capita income levels...

This paper shows that the WTO's Article XXIV increases the likelihood of free trade, but may worsen world welfare when free trade is not reached and customs unions (CUs) form. We consider a model of many countries. Article XXIV prevents a CU from raising its common external tariff, which makes...

This Paper studies the evolution of sectoral labour concentration in relation to the level of per capita income. We show that various measures of sectoral concentration follow a U-shaped pattern across a wide variety of data sources: countries first diversify, in the sense that labour is spread...

This paper deals with the investment effects of regional integration agreements and discusses how such arrangements may affect inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) flows in the integrating region. After setting up a conceptual framework for the analysis, we provide three studies...

We study the effects of trade barriers and the persistence of past linkages on trade flows in the former Soviet Union (FSU). Estimating a gravity equation on 1987-1996 trade among and between nine Russian regions and fourteen FSU republics, we find that Russian regions traded 60 percent more...

If South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are to become constructively engaged in the next attempt by World Trade Organization (WTO) members to liberalize trade multilaterally, they need to be convinced that there will be sufficient gains from trade reform to warrant the inevitable costs of...

This paper explores to what extent the magnitude and speed of the contagion effects that materialized in East Asia in the second half of 1997 may have had "real" underpinnings, in the sense that the pattern of production, consumption and trade increased the vulnerability of East Asian countries...

Trade liberalization in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland was accomplished in record time between 1989 and 1991. Sustainability became, however, a major concern in Central and Eastern Europe as the `honeymoon of trade liberalization' ended in 1991/2. The paper examines whether Europe Agreements...