 The Economic Impact of European IntegrationBarry Eichengreen and Andrea Boltho No 6820, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research Abstract: Economic integration, from the European Payments Union and the European Coal and Steel Community to the Common Market, the European Monetary System, the Single Market, and the euro, is one of the most visible, controversial and commented-upon aspects of Europe?s development since the end of World War II. It is hard to imagine that Europe?s economy would have developed the same way without it. Or is it? We see how far we can push the argument that European living standards, growth rates, and economic structure would have been little different in the absence of the institutions and processes that have culminated in today?s European Union. We adopt the methodology applied by Fogel to the railroads: suspecting that the results are small, wherever possible we adopt assumptions that bias upward the estimated impact. We conclude that European incomes would have been roughly 5 per cent lower today in the absence of the EU. Keywords: European integration; European union (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6820 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK. |
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