Why do countries participate in currency unions or unilaterally adopt a foreign currency? I investigate the roles of geography, synchronization of economic shocks, cultural similarity, size, political integration and colonial heritage as determinants of monetary unions. The results motivate a selection model for common currency areas, which I then use to revisit the impact of currency-union mem...

Historically, African labour unions, at first were an importing driving force of the anti-colonial liberation struggle, before they transformed into transmission belts of ruling parties and governments after independence. In exchange for giving up fundamental freedoms they received a secured status, secure jobs for their members and privileges for their leaders. A rude awakening was caused by t...

In this paper we use British Household Panel Survey data to examine the relationship between unionization and unpaid overtime in Britain. The findings indicate that in the for-profit, non-caring sector of the economy, union covered employees supply fewer unpaid overtime hours than noncovered ones due to union protection and the weakening of economic incentives caused by union bargaining. On the...

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Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) are agreements among a set of countries involving preferential treatment of bilateral trade between any two parties to the agreement relative to their trade with the rest of the world. Preferences, however, need not extend to all trade between the two, and the coverage could depend on the type of PTAs. Customs unions and the so-called free trade areas are co...

A process of endogenous human capital formation is analyzed in combination with the existence of trade unions and banks. By lowering opportunity costs for schooling, trade unions provide incentive for human capital investments for parts of the workforce. Imperfect competition in the banking sector creates a self-selection situation favorable for long-term investment giving firms the possibility...

Historically, the supposed independence of unions from parties in France has been a myth, with the development of close relations between the CGT and the PCF on the one hand, and looser ones between the CFDT in particular, and the PS on the other. These links weakened from the 1980s on, but appeared to be re-established, with some changes, when unions backed François Hollande in the 2012 presid...

Our paper provides a theoretical analysis of the potential trade implications of a currency union focusing on the crucial role of economic dissimilarities among countries. Modeling the adoption of a common currency as the elimination of transaction costs on international trade, we show that a currency union enhances bilateral trade among members while it reduces bilateral trade between members ...

Overlapping bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) are proliferating in East Asia. Quite a few economists worry about the spaghetti bowl phenomenon expected from the proliferating East Asian regional trade agreements (RTAs).The complicated web of hub-and-spoke type of FTAs can result in high costs for verifying rules of origin (RoO). As an alternative policy option to avoid the negative effect ...