Wachstumstheoretische Perspektiven der Wirtschaftsintegration: Neuere Ansätze / New Theories on the Growth Effects of Economic Integration

Economic integration alters the growth path of the involved economies through scale, factor reallocation and factor trade effects. Scale effects arising from positive spillovers are best known from literature. Provided that the growth mechanism in autarky is the more efficient the larger is the economy, integration increases the relevant scale of an economy which unambiguously fosters growth. However, if spillovers are not intensive enough or if they arise from an average value of the capital stock, long-term growth remains unaffected by trade. Furthermore, integration leads to a reallocation of factors between sectors. If trade causes a reallocation of inputs from dynamic sectors to other sectors, the growth rate decreases. This can happen in the case of integration with countries being rich in the factor that is extensively used in the dynamic sectors, assuming a low substitutability of inputs in production. If all sectors contribute to the dynamics of an economy, the probability of negative factor reallocation effects becomes lower. Factor trade between the economies can reinforce differences in the countries' growth rates leading to growth centers in an integrated economic area. The present paper demonstrates these mechanisms in an integrated approach providing a compact survey of the recent literature on trade and growth.