context of the 2007 EU enlargement. Although EU membership is among the most important events in Bulgaria and Romania's modern … difference-in-differences strategy and Eurobarometer data, we provide the first evidence that joining the EU increased average … trust towards the EU increased only in Bulgaria but not in Romania after both countries joined in 2007. Furthermore, Romania …

Eastern European and Former Soviet Union countries diverged massively. Institutions are a main reason. The EU anchor thesis … posits that the prospect of membership in the European Union (EU) played a key role in filling in the institutional vacuum …, focusing on whether the prospect of EU membership accelerated institutional development and, if so, whether this was indeed …

-club. Seen through the lens of club goods theory, the EU is a club of nations, each of which can be interpreted as itself a club … automatically benefit from the EU wide meta-club good. We characterize the unique equilibrium when individual clubs that may differ …

European Union (EU), had successfully completed negotiations and fulfilled all accession requirements, taken membership in the … European Economic Area (with full access to the Single Market), but decided in a referendum to reject full-fledged EU … politically driven economic benefits from EU membership: if Norway had joined the EU in 1995, productivity levels between 1995 and …