Suchergebnisse

[Introduction] A quantitative assessment of the level of integration among geographic units (such as regions, states or countries) is of interest to a wide range of audiences. Policy-makers, for instance, may want to identify barriers to cross-regional interaction. José Manuel Barroso (2009, p. 28), the then President of the European Commission, provides an illustrative example; in the political guidelines for his second term as the head of the Commission he notes: "I intend to launch a major analysis of the 'missing links' in the internal market, to find out why it has not delivered on its full potential and thereby to identify new sources of growth and social cohesion." Five years later, but still along similar lines, the European Commission (2013, p. 4) argues: "Today, during the crisis, it is more necessary than ever to address where the single market does not yet function as it should to the benefits of citizens and businesses." For economists, the measurement of integration is of particular importance when quantifying the gains from exchange. Any reasonable assessment of the consequences of a removal of barriers to trade requires measures (observed or constructed) that allow a comparison of different states of integration. As a result, empirical findings may be sensitive to the exact definition of measures of integration. Rodriguez and Rodrik (2001), for instance, highlight the relevance of measurement issues in an article which has become an instant classic; in a critical review of empirical analyses of the effect of trade openness on economic growth, they illustrate the difficulties in quantifying a country's openness to trade. In this chapter, we review the process of European integration in the post-World War II period and discuss issues related to the measurement of economic and institutional integration. Starting from the observation that the quantitative assessment of the level of integration is a non-trivial task, in Section 2 we highlight the challenges involved in the quantification from a European perspective. In Section 3, we review a selection of available indicators of European integration in more detail. A brief summary concludes the chapter.

The literature on the growth effects of European integration remains inconclusive. This is due to severe methodological difficulties mostly driven by country heterogeneity. This paper addresses these concerns using the synthetic control method. It constructs counterfactuals for countries that joined the European Union (EU) from 1973 to 2004. We find that growth effects from EU membership are large and positive, with Greece as the exception. Despite substantial variation across countries and over time, we estimate that without European integration, per capita incomes would have been, on average, approximately 10% lower in the first ten years after joining the EU.

The literature on the growth effects of European integration remains inconclusive. This is due to severe methodological difficulties mostly driven by country heterogeneity. This paper addresses these concerns using the synthetic control method. It constructs counterfactuals for countries that joined the European Union (EU) from 1973 to 2004. We find that growth effects from EU membership are large and positive, with Greece as the exception. Despite substantial variation across countries and over time, we estimate that without European integration, per capita incomes would have been, on average, approximately 10% lower in the first ten years after joining the EU.

With a view to developing a future research agenda in integration studies, this article derives five theoretical integration constellations from empirical cases with varying combinations of economic dependence and shared identification: symmetric and weak symmetric integration, two types of asymmetric integration and no integration. Asymmetric integration is defined as a situation in which either political/institutional integration is extensive amid a low degree of structural economic integration (Type I), or, there is extensive structural economic integration without any political/institutional integration (Type II). Type II, represented by Taiwan/People's Republic of China, appears theoretically the most interesting and is therefore examined in more detail for whether strong economic dependence by itself conceivably can be a sufficient background condition for political integration despite a lack of shared identification. Based on the analysis, several future research questions are developed. Do structural and institutional integration tend to converge over time, bringing about a more symmetric integration constellation? If that is so, which constellation of initial background conditions is more conducive to produce symmetric integration? Is approximate symmetricity between the background conditions shared identification and economic dependence a prerequisite for smooth integration?

Abstract
What are the distributional implications of European institutional integration? This article argues that European institutional integration exerts a moderating effect on the relationship between trade union strength and income inequality—particularly inequality at the top—within countries of the European Union (EU). I contend that European institutional integration reduces the bargaining power of trade unions due to rising market competition and decreasing union control over the supply of labor. Thus, the effectiveness of trade unions in reducing inequality should decline with progressing European institutional integration. On the basis of a long-term within-country analysis of the EU15, I will show that the effect of trade unions on inequality varies strongly with European institutional integration. Consistent with the theoretical argument, the inequality-reducing effect of trade unions becomes substantially lower the more a country integrates in the EU.