IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ris/integr/0912.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regional Integration and Economic Development: Optimal or Messy Networks?

Author

Listed:
  • Genn, Gaspare M.

    (Political Science and Public Administration)

  • Yang, Zining

    (Cal Poly Pomona, California, USA)

  • Abdollahian, Mark

    (Claremont Graduate University, California, USA)

Abstract

States join regional integration organizations (RIOs) hoping that membership will boost economic development. Such cooperation should improve the efficiency of economic factors via firm competition, which will promote development. We argue that economic growth is difficult to produce when states form overlapping memberships and join RIOs with economies of similar size and similar levels of development. While joining an RIO may be beneficial, many overlapping memberships tend to involve larger costs through added obligations, leading to low economic performance. Integrating with similarly sized economies is not as beneficial as integrating with larger, relatively wealthier partners. We support our hypotheses using 180 states from 1962-2014. Using social network and time-series analysis, we find that joining multiple RIOs tends to decrease GDP per capita growth. However, the effect is not uniform: the negative effect is stronger in lesser-developed countries and does not hold when RIO membership includes a large economic partner.

Suggested Citation

  • Genn, Gaspare M. & Yang, Zining & Abdollahian, Mark, 2024. "Regional Integration and Economic Development: Optimal or Messy Networks?," Journal of Economic Integration, Center for Economic Integration, Sejong University, vol. 39(3), pages 557-589.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:integr:0912
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.e-jei.org
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    comparative regional integration; economic performance; asymmetric power; developing economies; social network analysis; time series regression;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • F55 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Institutional Arrangements
    • F63 - International Economics - - Economic Impacts of Globalization - - - Economic Development

    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:0912. 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.