Single markets: economic integration in Europe and the United States

This book compares the US polity and economy in the nineteenth century with the struggles of contemporary post-war European Integration to create a single market, address barriers to trade, and deal with sharply contested political, geographic, social and sectoral interests.

This book compares the US polity and economy in the nineteenth century with the struggles of contemporary post-war European integration to create a single market, address barriers to trade, and deal with sharply contested political, geographic, social and sectoral interests.

This ambitious volume provides a trenchant and timely analysis of the creation of a single market in both the EU and the US. Comparing the experience of the US during the nineteenth century and the single market of the EU in the twentieth century, Single Markets demonstrates how the political economy of single market formation has followed remarkably similar trajectories. Both cases show evidence of interplay between different levels of government in determining distributive outcomes; evolution of a legal framework for the market; and development of new regulatory strategies to deal with changing economic realities. The book illustrates the process of market consolidation through a detailed comparison of the so-called four freedoms: the removal of border controls; and the largely unrestricted transfer of goods, services, and capital across different jurisdictions. In both cases, establishing one market, one currency, and a more unified banking and financial system transformed largely autonomous or sovereign constituent units into a more unified economic entity