Economics: Economic Integration

<p>Economic integration teaches you the tools you need to understand and analyse what happens when countries integrate their economies through international cooperation. You also deal with the consequences of international disintegration, such as trade wars and growing protectionism.</p><p>You explore the world of economic integration. You will learn how to analyse and understand many of the events that have dominated global news recently. For instance, what happens to trade and welfare when a long-time member of the European Union (EU) decides to leave, such as the UK did through Brexit? What are the implications for the world economy when a long-time staunch defender of trade liberalisation, like the US, changes course and starts to implement protectionism, and engage in escalating trade wars? And how can we actually trace back environmental degradation - like the burning of the Amazon forest - to the same trade wars? By taking this course, you will learn all the tools that you need to analyse these events, and discuss their wider economic implications. </p><p>The course starts by introducing the multilateral trading system. We discuss the economics of a large set of trade policy instruments, and outline the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules for how countries may use them. In part two of the course, we focus on regional economic integration, analysing how free trade agreements, customs unions etc will affect trade and welfare under various assumptions. In the final part of the course, all tools that have been introduced in the course are applied to analyse and discuss a real-world policy example (for instance European Integration and Brexit).</p>