Trade integration in the European Union: Openness,interconnectedness, and distance

Abstract This article presents a set of indicators to measure regional trade integration, focusing on the case of the European Union. We propose measures of openness, connectedness and integration which are tuned to evaluate not only how these components contribute to the advance of international integration, but also to control for the potential threat posed by the proliferation of regional trade agreements to trade globalization. Although this and related questions have been examined from several perspectives, the present article explicitly attempts to quantify how regional trade agreements either intensify or thwart trade globalization. Results show that the process of trade integration …