Up to date, the project has been structured into seven papers. The first four papers deal with the role of economic unions. The first one analyzes the forces that led to the emergence of economic unions in the second half of the XXth century. The second one provides a new theory of how to assign power between the union and its member countries. The third one provides an explanation of why the European union has become less popular in the XXIst. The fourth one provides analysis of alternative fiscal regimes for the union.
The remaining three papers are on the border effect. To produce these papers, we constructed a new database on European regional trade. For the first time ever, we have a complete bilateral trade matrix for European regions. One of the papers provides a detailed description of European regional trade. Another paper estimates border effects and finds that regions in different countries trade only 17.5 percent what they would trade if they were in the same country. Thus, the border effect is still strong in Europe. Finally, a third project uses a quantitative model, calibrated with our data, to assess the impact of border changes in Europe.