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EU Expansion and EU Growth

Alan Deardorff and Robert Stern

No 487, Working Papers from Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan

Abstract: Almost from its inception as the European Economic Community, the European Union has excited the hope if not the expectation that it would generate dynamic gains from trade, including perhaps a permanent increase in the rates of growth of participating countries. This paper examines the empirical evidence relating to this issue and then interprets the economic performance of the EU countries in terms of a simple theoretical model of economic integration with increasing returns to scale. The paper concludes that evidence for increased long-run growth rates of the EU countries is weak, and that what may have happened instead is that countries have benefited asymmetrically from the formation and the later expansion of the EU. Benefits of economic integration appear to accrue - in the form of temporarily higher growth rates leading to higher levels of per capita income - first to large countries and then to some smaller countries that entered the arrangement relatively early.

Keywords: European integration; Trade and growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 Pages
Date: 2002
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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http://fordschool.umich.edu/rsie/workingpapers/Papers476-500/r487.pdf

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Chapter: EU Expansion and EU Growth (2004)
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