In 1999, eleven European countries formed the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU); they abandoned their national currencies and adopted a new common currency, the euro. Several recent papers argue that the introduction of the euro has led (by itself) to a sizable and statistically significant...

Distance related variables typically vary in a cross-section dimension but less so in a time dimension across cities, regions, or countries. The enlargement of the EU or the introduction of the euro, however, can be looked upon as integration shocks that are informative of the consequences of...

We study the impact of political knowledge on the attitudes of European citizens towards the possible distribution of responsibilities between European level institutions and national governments in three policy areas: foreign policy, defence and immigration policy. The hypothesis tested is that...

Europe's monetary union is part of a broader process of integration that started in the aftermath of World War II. In this "political guide for economists" we look at the creation of the euro within the bigger picture of European integration. How and why were European institutions established?...

Under what conditions can the European Neighbourhood Policy achieve one of its main objectives: to resolve conflicts in the European Union's neighbourhood? In the spirit of Montesquieu and Monnet, the basic hypothesis of the EU is that closer economic integration encourages governments to take...

This paper discusses the process of European institutional integration from a political-economy perspective, linking the long-standing political debate on the nature of the European project to the recent economic literature on political integration and disintegration. First, we introduce the...

We estimate the Feldstein-Horioka equation for the period 1960 - 2012 and find structural breaks that coincide with the introduction of the European single market in 1993, the introduction of the euro in 1999 and the financial crisis in 2008. The results suggest that the correlation between...

How important is spatial identity in shifting preferences for redistribution? This paper takes advantage of within-country variability in the adoption of a single currency as an instrument to examine the impact of the rescaling of spatial identity in Europe. We draw upon data from the last three...

The expansion of regionalism has spawned an extensive theoretical literature analysing the effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on trade flows. In this paper we focus on FTAs (also called European agreements) between the European Union (EU-15) and the Central and Eastern European countries...