This paper highlights the economic meaning of the size of the state for members of the European Union, thereby making the economic success of EU states statistically tangible. Firstly, we show in descriptive illustrations that the theoretically expected characteristics of small countries clearly...

In the light of the current economic debt crisis within the Euro zone, the heterogeneity of EU members has becoming increasingly apparent. This heterogeneity is evident not only in some single macroeconomic variables but also in the level of economic integration with the other EU members....

The concept of European integration is often investigated in scientific papers and political debates, a uniform definition of this concept does not exist, however. Thereby, different steps and processes of European integration are hardly quantifiable. Moreover, it is hardly ever discussed that...

Historiography on European integration before 1914 has acknowledged that the level of entanglements between the European nation-states was quite advanced. Indeed, historians were able to confirm a high level of cooperation on the legal, social, technical and even political level. And yet, the...