This presentation will discuss the theoretical and econometric literatures on European Enlargements and intends to be a call to arms for economists to be more involved in the next (Ukraine-led) enlargement.
It is organised in three parts. The first discusses the main features of an economists’ conceptual framework (stressing the economic theories of integration, clubs, and convergence) and identifies areas that may need further research. The second part is on context and implementation: it provides a brief historical overview of the four enlargements so far (i.e., Northern, Southern, Scandinavian, and Eastern) and distil three main lessons. The third part focuses on the attempts so far to estimate the net economic benefits from previous enlargements. It reveals documents the huge heterogeneity at both enlargement and country levels (e.g. productivity gains for the Scandinavian enlargement were substantially lower than that for all others and, for an example on cross-country heterogeneity, we find Latvia benefited the most from membership while Greece benefited the least, with the productivity gains enjoyed by the former being at least three times larger than those by the latter.) The presentation concludes with suggestions for future policy-oriented research.
This seminar is part of the CIVICA Europe Revisited Seminar Series.
Nauro F. Campos is Professor of Economics at University College London and Visiting Research Professor at ETH-Zurich. He was the Director of the UCL Centre for Comparative Economics. His main fields of interest are political economy and European integration. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California (Los Angeles) in 1997, where he was lucky enough to learn about institutions from Jeff Nugent and Jim Robinson and (more than) happy to be Dick Easterlin's RA. He is the editor in chief of Comparative Economic Studies (the journal of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies) and of Cambridge University Press series Elements of Economics of European Integration.
Nicholas Barr FRSA is Professor in Public Economics at the London School of Economics. He has an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. Nick is the author of numerous articles, and author or editor of over twenty books, including The Economics of the Welfare State (5th edition, 2012), Pension Reform: A Short Guide (with Peter Diamond) (2010, also in Chinese and Spanish), and Financing Higher Education: Answers from the UK (with Iain Crawford), (2005). The heart of his work is an exploration of how market failures can both explain and justify the existence of welfare states.