Growth Effects of European Integration

This paper deals with the effects of European integration in the EC and EFTA on economic growth. Base regressions suggest that EC and EFTA memberships do in fact have a positive and significant effect on economic growth, and that there is no significant difference between EC and EFTA membership. This result is not completely robust with respect to changes in the set of control variables and to measurement errors. Nonetheless, the results suggest that regional integration may not only affect resource allocation, but also long-run growth rates. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that we obtain similar results when we use panel data for a sample of OECD countries. A number of tests are also conducted to ascertain that the EC/EFTA variable is not primarily a proxy for the effect of economic development. In addition, we explore possible indirect effects of regional integration.