IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ris/integr/0058.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

‘Natural’ Trading Blocs: A Closer Look

Author

Listed:
  • Nitsch, Volker

    (Bankgesellschaft Berlin)

Abstract

It is occasionally argued that the formation of trading blocs between geographi - cally proximate countries should be encouraged because positive welfare effects are more likely to outweigh negative welfare effects. This paper presents a simple d i ff e rentiated products model that allows to test whether the formation of a ‘natural’ trading bloc, first, is indeed increasing world welfare and, second, is welfare-superior to the formation of an ‘unnatural’ trading bloc. Simulations show that, while the removal of trade barriers always improves world welfare, ‘unnatural’ bloc formation may, under some conditions, be welfare-superior to the formation of trading blocs along ‘natural’ lines. The concept of ‘natural’ trad - ing blocs is therefore a misguided prescription.

Suggested Citation

  • Nitsch, Volker, 1997. "‘Natural’ Trading Blocs: A Closer Look," Journal of Economic Integration, Center for Economic Integration, Sejong University, vol. 12, pages 433-455.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:integr:0058
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Winters, L. Alan, 1996. "Regionalism versus Multilateralism," CEPR Discussion Papers 1525, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Richard Baldwin, 2008. "Big-Think Regionalism: A Critical Survey," NBER Working Papers 14056, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Natural;

    JEL classification:

    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:integr:0058. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Yunhoe Kim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desejkr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.