Eu Commodity Market Integration Of Empirical Research

Regional integration has been going hand in hand with globalization since World War II. It acts as a mirror to the trend in regional economic development and regional spatial structure evolution. The European Union(EU) is no doubt the best example of a well-developed regional integration organizations. After decades of development, the European common market evolved from the initial six-country group to a Union with 27 member states. It is the second biggest global economic super power and the biggest unified market. The EU commits itself to the free flow of goods, capital, service and personnel, and has achieved great success in integration. Nonetheless, the EU is far from a unified market in a real sense. As the most successful regional integration organization, EU still has many barriers hindering the free movements of goods, capital, service and personnel from within. Based on a review of previous research, this paper estimates EU's level of integration in the commodity market from the border effect perspective, which refers to the effects on the cross-border economic activities and can be divided into external and internal border effects. It also quantitatively investigates the relevant factors affecting EU's commodity market integration within the frame of gravitation model, discusses the various policies and measures adopted for European integration, and summarizes the implications of these policies and measures for China's development.The paper consists of seven parts.The first part is the introduction part, mainly introducing the significance of the study, the research questions and methods, and points out the innovations and the limitations.The second part narrates and comments the connected references, and indicates the research perpective. The integration theory emphatically analyzes the resources relocation effect brought to the member states, but too much on the theory part and wanting empirical study. In contrast, gravitation model is a superior and solid foundation of quantitative analysis of trade and regional economic integration. The border effect is developed from gravitation model, and has turned out to be a better way to quantitatively investigate the influencing factors of regional integration. Therefore, this paper chooses to study the integration of goods market from the perspective of border effect.The third part statistically analyzes the development and the obstacles of European integration. It first reviews the establishment of the community and the development of the European integration, with its emphases on the analysis of goods market integration. Then, it analyzes the current economic situation of European integration, especially its level of integration by means of statistical study. Finally, the author discusses the obstacles hindering European integration.The fourth part carries on the empirical study of the factors influencing the European integration based on the theory of border effects. We find out that: 1) the values of internal border effects between EU's 25 member states are quite big, indicating that obstacles exist among the Union preventing its further integration; 2) the values of the EU's 25 internal border effects are smaller than that of international border effects between EU and other countries, indicating that the integration level among the Union's 25 member states is higher than that with countries outside of the Union; 3) the values of EU 15 are far smaller than those of EU 25, the values of international border effects between the EU and other countries are also far smaller than those between EU 25's internal border effects, reflecting the difficulty of further integration and coordination after EU's eastward expansion.The fifth part is the empirical study of the factors influencing European integration. This chapter quantitatively analyzes other factors affecting EU's level of integration in commodity market, and concludes: 1), the increase of distance between two member states has significantly negative influence on the integration levels of EU 25 and EU 15; 2), the introduction of tax can better explain the integration levels of EU 25 and EU 15; 3), the same language and culture environment further improves the explanation; 4), the introduction of the variable of population remarkably increases the power of explanation; 5), the degree of influence of linguistic culture has different influence on the integration level of EU 25 and EU 15.The sixth part reviews various strategies taken to get rid of the obstacles preventing free movements to promote integration, the implementation of regional cohesion policy and of policies to handle the negative effect of eastward expansion. With the research result of border effects in mind, the author pays special attention to the analysis of the coordination policies in the field of revenue system, welfare system and research and development.The last part is the conclusion and implications of the research. It summarizes the results of the study and the policies taken by the EU in promoting its regional integration, and discusses the implications of the EU's policies to the China's domestic regional integration and cohesion.