The Trade Effects of Border Controls: Evidence from the European Schengen Agreement

Gabriel Felbermayr, Jasmin Gröschl and Thomas Steinwachs
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Jasmin Groeschl

No DP-2016-36, Working Papers from Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)

Abstract: The Schengen Agreement is an important milestone in the European integration process. The purpose is to facilitate the flow of goods, services, and persons across intra-European borders. How successful is it in achieving this goal? We apply an econometric gravity analysis to bilateral trade. Unlike earlier analysis, we acknowledge that Schengen treats di?erent country pairs di?erently, depending on their relative geographical location. Moreover, we find it crucial to carefully control for other elements of European integration such as membership in the customs union, the single market or the currency union, and to factor in countries' trade with themselves. Schengen has boosted trade by about 2.81% on average, on top of the EU's trade e?ects (equivalent to a drop in tari?s between 0.46 and 1.02 percentage points). Trade creation e?ects for services are stronger than for goods, but estimates feature larger parameter uncertainty. Peripheral countries benefit more than central ones. Other aspects of EU integration matter much more for trade than Schengen.

Keywords: Trade Integration; European Integration; Schengen Agreement; Gravity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F15 N74 N94 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages.
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.eria.org/ERIA-DP-2016-36.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Trade Effects of Border Controls: Evidence from the European Schengen Agreement (2018)
Working Paper: The Trade Effects of Border Controls: Evidence from the European Schengen Agreement (2016)
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:era:wpaper:dp-2016-36

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ranti Amelia ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).