The regional impact of EU association agreements: lessons for the ENP from the CEE experience

Vassilis Monastiriotis (), Dimitris Kallioras () and George Petrakos

LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series from European Institute, LSE

Abstract: The Eastern Enlargement of the EU saw a proliferation of association agreements with countries in the Ônear abroadÕ under EUÕs European Neighbourhood Policy framework. Although such agreements are considered to be strictly welfare-enhancing, there is very little evidence to show their economic effects, including their distributional consequences across space, separately from other concurrent processes (transition, internationalisation, capital deepening, etc). This paper draws on the experience of pre-accession agreements in Central and Eastern Europe to estimate the effect that such agreements had on regional growth, and thus on the long-run evolution of regional disparities, in the associated countries. We apply an event-analysis and exploit the country variation in the timing of these agreements to identify their distinctive effect on regional growth, using regional data at the NUTS3 levels covering the period from the early transition phase (1991/92) until the eruption of the financial crisis (2008). Our results provide strong evidence that EU association agreements accelerate growth; but show that this is far from evenly distributed across space Ð with denser, larger and more diversified regional economies gaining the most. We discuss what these findings imply for regional growth and spatial imbalances in the new wave of associated countries under the ENP.

Keywords: association agreements; event analysis; regional growth; Central Eastern Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F15 F55 O43 R11 R15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-geo and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: The regional impact of EU association agreements: lessons for the ENP from the CEE experience (2014)
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