Economic Integration and Political Disintegration

NBER Working Paper No. 6163

Issued in September 1997

NBER Program(s):Economic Fluctuations and Growth, International Finance and Macroeconomics, International Trade and Investment



Trade liberalization and political separatism go hand in hand. In a world of trade restrictions, large countries enjoy economic benefits because political boundaries determine the size of the market. In a world of free trade and global markets even relatively small cultural, linguistic or ethnic groups can benefit from forming small and homogeneous political jurisdictions that trade peacefully and are economically integrated with others. This paper provides a formal model of the relationship between openness and the equilibrium number and size of countries, and successfully tests two implications of the model. The first one is that the economic benefits of country size depend on and are mediated by the degree of openness to trade. The second is that the history of Nation-State creations and secessions is influenced by the trade regime.

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w6163

Published: Alesina, A., E. Spolaore and R. Wacziarg. "Economic Integration And Political Disintegration," American Economic Review, 2000, v90(5,Dec), 1276-1296. citation courtesy of

Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded* these: