Suchergebnisse

My thesis analyzes various types of economic integration over about half a century. It consists of four parts. Chapter 2 strives to separate the 'treatment effect' of national border demarcation. Earlier research into prices and trade has presented robust evidence that political borders divert trade beyond explicit border costs. Price data show that political borders correlate with deviations from the law of one price. Trade data indicate lower than expected exchange of goods across borders. Although research has made progress since Obstfeld and Rogoff (2000) have declared border effects one of the six major puzzles in international economics, they are not well understood and their actual extent remains unclear. To this end, I determine the actual 'treatment effect' of borders by considering the new German-Polish border in 1919/1921 as natural experiment. In the spirit of Alesina et al. (2000) such treatment effects of borders can be interpreted as the economic costs of new demarcation incurred by new nation states. Put differently, the higher treatment effects are, the more economically costly is political disintegration. Chapter 3 applies the approach elaborated in chapter 2, to trade integration in all of Central Europe after the peace treaty of Versailles in 1919 in order to evaluate the economic impact of border drawing. Appendix A introduces a new data set of regional trade in Europe between 1885-1933, which is analyzed in chapter 2 and chapter 3. War, the sowing the seeds of hatred, the massive destruction of infrastructure, and the foundation of many new nation states in Central Europe did certainly not foster trade integration. Moreover, trade conflicts disturbed the European and later the whole Atlantic economy, while the USSR pursued a strategy to become economically autark from the rest of the world after the New Economic Policy implemented in the early 1920s. Because chapter 2 indicates that the treatment effect of new political borders depends on the extent of prewar integration, chapter 3 examines ...

The African Union seeks to create eight regional economic and monetary communities until 2023, which shall ultimately be merged to a continental African Economic and Monetary Union until 2034. As the economic rationale for creating a single market for goods, services and labor seem straightforward; making a compelling case for a single currency is much harder. This dissertation empirically assesses how Africa and its regions meet the criteria for optimum currency areas and concludes that Africa should abandon its plans of monetary unification for the foreseeable future.

By examining the various policy subfields of European economic integration such as agriculture, trade, banking, economic governance and sustainability this book offers a comprehensive and wide-ranging analysis of developments that have taken place in the past five years aimed at exploring the path of economic integration in Europe. Annette Bongardt, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, UK Béatrice Dumont, University of Paris 13, France Peter Holmes, Centre for the Analysis of Regional Integration at Sussex (CARIS) Timothy Edward Josling, Stanford University, USA Heikki Oksanen, University of Helsinki, Finland Jacques Pelkmans, CEPS in Brussels, Belgium Paul Schure, University of Victoria in Canada Susan Senior Nello, Siena University, Italy Alan Swinbank, University of Reading, UK Niels Thygesen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Francisco Torres, Oxford University, UK

This book surveys the prospects for regional monetary integration in various parts of the world. Beginning with a brief review of the theory of optimal currency areas, it goes on to examine the structure and functioning of the European Monetary Union, then turns to the prospects for monetary integration elsewhere in the world - North America, South America, and East Asia. Such cooperation may take the form of full-fledged monetary unions or looser forms of monetary cooperation. The book emphasizes the economic and institutional requirements for successful monetary integration, including the need for a single central bank in the case of a full-fledged monetary union, and the corresponding need for multinational institutions to safeguard its independence and assure its accountability. The book concludes with a chapter on the implications of monetary integration for the United States and the US dollar