Regionalism and the Humanities

Regionalism and Growth

The Political Economy of Regionalism

We examine the incentives of regions in a country to unite or to separate. We nd that smaller regions have greater incentives to unite, relative to larger regions. We show, however, that on the whole, majority voting on separation and union generates excessive incentives to separate. This leads us to examine the scope of alternative political institutions and rules in overcoming the potential i...

Small Countries and Regionalism

The number of regional trade agreements has nearly doubled in the last four years. Interestingly, relatively small countries have put enormous effort into joining regional agreements with larger countries during this period. In this paper, we address the following question: why are small countries so eager to be a part of these agreements? We construct a general equilibrium model of a natural t...

Regionalism and the World Trading System

Increasing economic integration has been one of the major forces driving the world economy's impressive growth over the last fortyfive years. Today, however, more than at any time since World War 11, the future of the world trading system is in doubt. Ironically, just as the Soviet Union, Eastern ~ u r o ~ e , and many developing countries rush to join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade...

The New Regionalism and Policy Interdependence

Since 1990 the number of preferential trade agreements has increased rapidly. Our argument explains this phenomenon, known as the new regionalism, as a result of competition for market access. Exporters that face trade diversion because of their exclusion from a preferential trade agreement concluded by foreign countries push their governments into signing an agreement with the country in which...