A Theory of Economic Unions

Jaume Ventura, Giacomo Ponzetto and Gino Gancia

No 14121, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: After decades of successful growth, economic unions have recently become the focus of heightened political controversy. We argue that this is partly due to the growth of trade between countries that are increasingly dissimilar. We develop a theoretical framework to study the effects on trade, income distribution and welfare of economic unions that differ in size and scope. Our model shows that political support for international unions can grow with their breadth and depth as long as member countries are sufficiently similar. However, differences in economic size and factor endowments can trigger disagreement over the value of unions between and within countries. The model is consistent with some salient features of the process of European integration and statistical evidence from survey data.

Keywords: Economic unions; Non-tariff barriers; European integration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 F15 F55 F62 H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP14121 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: A theory of economic unions (2020)
Working Paper: A Theory of Economic Unions (2019)
Working Paper: A Theory of Economic Unions (2019)
Working Paper: A theory of economic unions (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14121

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP14121
orders@cepr.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (repec@cepr.org).