International Economic Integration

Book excerpt: International economic integration is a topic upon which both academics and policy-makers are focusing a great deal of attention. This has perhaps been most marked in western Europe, given the establishing of the inter nal market and the prospects for an economic and monetary union. In parallel with the movement toward widening and deeping of western European economic integration, we find an increased integration of eastern Europe to world trade and finance as well as regional integration in North America and in East Asia. The book on hand provides a collection of recent research by leading scholars and practicians in this field. It is divided into three parts. The first part deals with some theoretical aspects of international integration, the second and the third part attend to implications of concrete forms of international integration inside and outside Europe. Part I starts with a neoclassical analysis of the impacts of factor-market integration by Franz Peter Lang. He investigates the effects on production level, production structure, demand level and structure of external trade of a "small integration area". Lang shows that the specific welfare effects of factor-market integration can only be realized if and only if external trade (between the integration area and the rest of the world) is increased too.