Implicit Trade Costs and European Single Market Enlargement.

A major current issue in the economics of trade blocs is where the bloc is not just a customs union, but also incorporates substantial regulatory harmonisation or mutual recognition elements. The derivation of the costs of non-membership of such a bloc is not straightforward. In this paper I build on the assumption that observed trade pat- terns can be taken to reveal trading costs, and develop a model-consistent Dixit-Stiglitz general equilibrium-based calibration technique as an alternative to gravity methods previously used. I use the model to investigate numerically the likely trade e¤ects of the recent widening of the European Single Market to incorporate several Central and Eastern European Countries.