A theory of economic unions

• 成果类型: Article; Proceedings Paper
• 署名作者: Gancia, Gino; Ponzetto, Giacomo A. M.; Ventura, Jaume
• 署名单位: University of London; Queen Mary University London; Pompeu Fabra University; Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI); Barcelona School of Economics; Pompeu Fabra University; Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2019.11.007
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 107-127
• 关键词: Economic unions; Non-tariff barriers; European integration

摘要

After decades of successful growth, economic unions have recently become the focus of heightened political controversy. To understand why, we develop a theoretical model of 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 provided member countries are sufficiently similar. However, differences in economic size and factor endowments can trigger disagreement over the value of unions. Our model is consistent with some salient features of the process of European integration and statistical evidence from survey data. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)