Yes / This study examines extent of financial cooperation in the South Asia region. This region although heterogeneous in terms of size, political ideologies and level of development yet shares similar historical and cultural closeness, poverty and low level of human development. Further, we also examined the likely factors influencing financial integration in the region. Overall, the results show that among the economic and political factors trade, income levels and political stability are the most important factors in influencing South Asian financial cooperation. The results also strongly support the view that countries more open and integrated through trade are more integrated financially.

The aim of the thesis is to further explore the relationship between economic integration and firm mobility and investment, both from an empirical and a theoretical perspective, with the objective of drawing conclusions on how government policy can be used to strengthen the positive impact of integration on investment, which is crucial in moving and maintaining countries at the forefront of the technology frontier and accelerating economic growth in a world of rapid technical change and high mobility of ideas, goods, services, capital and labor. The first chapter aims to bring together the literature on economic integration, firm mobility and investment. It contains two sections: one dedicated to the literature on FDI and the second covering the literature on firm entry and exit, economic performance and economic and business regulation. In the second chapter I examine the relationship between the Single Market and FDI both in an intra-EU context and from outside the EU. The empirical results show that the impact of the Single Market on FDI differs substantially from one country to another. This finding may be due to the functioning of institutions. The third chapter studies the relationship between the level of external trade protection put into place by a Regional Integration Agreement(RIA)and the option of a firm from outside the RIA block to serve the RIA market through FDI rather than exports. I find that the level of external trade protection put in place by the RIA depends on the RIA country's capacity to benefit from FDI spillovers, the magnitude of set-up costs of building a plant in the RIA and on the amount of external trade protection erected by the country from outside the reigonal block with respect to the RIA. The fourth chapter studies how the firm entry and exit process is affected by product market reforms and regulations and impact macroeconomic performance. The results show that an increase in deregulation will lead to a rise in firm entry and exit. This in turn will especially affect macroeconomic performance as measured by output growth and labor productivity growth. The analysis done at the sector level shows that results can differ substantially across industries, which implies that deregulation policies should be conducted at the sector level, rather than at the global macroeconomic level.

The post-Cold War era has seen a restructuring of the institutions of global governance and an intensification of international relations, to which one of the most important responses has been a reinvigoration of regionalism and regionalisation. The proliferation of regionalism has led to increased relations between regional groups in different world regions, and the EU has been central to the development of this new interregional phenomenon. This thesis sets out to test the theory of interregionalism by looking at how the EU has strategically pursued interregionalism, and at how this has subsequently worked in practice. To best achieve this objective the thesis develops a more sophisticated framework of analysis; complex interregionalism. This framework allows for a detailed investigation of how the EU has simultaneously engaged in bilateral and interregional relations in Latin America. The thesis explores the tensions between interregionalism as a strategy and interregionalism in action, principally by drawing lessons from the EU's relations with Latin America, and Mercosur in particular. The most general foundation for this analysis is the study of International Political Economy (IPE), particularly the extensive literature on regional integration and the emerging literature that deals specifically with interregionalism. The thesis starts by presenting a comprehensive framework for analysis of interregional relations using the theory of interregionalism. The theory of interregionalism, ascribes a series of motivations and impacts that interregionalism. should exhibit, all of which are replicated in EU complex interregional strategy. The EU is found to have a consistent and coherent complex interregional strategy that it employs across three world regions: Asia, Africa and Latin America. The EU, notably the Commission, is pursuing an ambitious complex interregional strategy in each region that encompasses different levels of relations with different actors, but a strategy that always centers on the pursuit of pure interregionalism. Whilst the thesis details the EU's pursuit of this consistent complex interregional strategy with all three of the aforementioned world regions, it is the presence of the Andean Community, Central American Common Market and Mercosur in Latin America that marks the region out for deeper analysis. Complex interregional strategy in Latin America is applied consistently to all three regional integration vehicles, confirming the EU desire to pursue pure interregionalism, most notably with Mercosur. Analysis of EU relations with Mercosur reveals a core tension between strategy and action, notably that Commission strategy is not translated into action, as witnessed by the change towards bilateral relations with Brazil in 2007. The thesis finds that more important than the EU inability to translate strategy into action, is its inability to foster regional integration in its partners and encourage more coherent counterparts for the future pursuit of pure interregionalism.

This thesis tackles issues related to regional integration, trade costs and aid, with empirical work related to the East African Community (EAC). The common thread is the impact of various types of trade costs on the structure and functioning of the economies of EAC member states. The first chapter introduces the literature and chapters 2, 3 and 4 constitute the core of the thesis. Chapter 2 develops a three-good, two-country duality-based general equilibrium model to investigate the effects of different types of aid and preferential trade on welfare and relative prices. The model is innovative in two ways: (i) a regionally tradable good is introduced, the price of which is determined endogenously, (ii) a regional infrastructure good, bought with aid monies, is brought in which lowers trade costs within the region. Using comparative statics, the properties of the model are explored in terms of the effects of tariff and aid shocks on welfare and relative prices. Chapter 3 develops a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model calibrated on Uganda and Kenya to gauge the importance of chapter 2’s results. The regional spill-over is now modeled as regional public capital serving as an input in both countries’ production functions. The simulations show how Kenya effectively exports some of the standard aid-induced real exchange rate appreciation to Uganda through a regional trade channel. Distributionally, Kenya’s urban and Uganda’s rural households win—which corresponds to regional comparative advantage patterns. Abolishing the intra-regional tariff increases welfare in Uganda and reduces it in Kenya, showing the ambiguous welfare results of Customs Unions known since Viner. Chapter 4 gauges the importance of border effects in Eastern Africa by testing the law-ofone- price (LOP) hypothesis on a consumer price data-set covering 24 goods in 39 cities in 4 countries. Using level regressions a significant border effect is found, whilst distance also plays a big role, both between and within countries. Neither the nominal exchange rate, nor non-tariff barriers (NTBs) reduce the border effect very much, even though both variables are significant. Looking at specific goods, markets for staple foods are the most integrated. As for the impact of the Customs Union between Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya (since 2005), there is a positive integration effect for the Kenya-Uganda border. Finally, Kenya’s political crisis at the end of 2007 can be linked to higher departures from the LOP throughout the region and can thus be said to have had clear knock-on effects for the landlocked EAC countries that depend on it as a transit country.

In this thesis, I handle the way security and terrorism act as a factor of regional cooperation in Asia. First chapter describes general issues within the topic, deals with terms of security, terrorism, its relationship with regional cooperation and observes security in the age globalization. Second chapter focuses on regional initiatives in Asia working with the topic. Third chapter is a case study of fighting terrorism in India and Pakistan.

Ao propor uma dissertação a respeito da teoria jurídica da integração no MERCOSUL, buscamos investigar aquelas características jurídicas próprias do bloco que não permitem que ele seja caracterizado como mais um instrumento de cooperação econômica clássica entre os Estados, nem como um organismo comunitário. Apesar de utilizarmos a teoria jurídica da integração econômica para esclarecer os critérios de investigação, será na análise da estrutura orgânica e da estrutura normativa do MERCOSUL que buscaremos investigar a natureza peculiar do direito mercosulino. Acreditamos que a caracterização de um bloco sob uma das nomenclaturas propostas pela teoria da integração regional seja produto, em realidade, da natureza de seu direito derivado. De fato, serão os diversos elementos que concorrem para a caracterização deste direito que são tantas vezes apresentados como evidência de que um bloco regional seja cooperativo ou comunitário, numa metonímia que toma a parte pelo todo. Ao contrário, a dissertação de mestrado que apresentamos expõe os resultados iniciais de nossa investigação sobre a totalidade dos elementos que concorrem para indicar a natureza de direito da integração do processo mercosulino. Não pretendemos investigar a natureza do bloco por mero argumento classificatório. Acreditamos que a identificação do caráter do processo de integração regional facilite a análise criteriosa a respeito do cumprimento das funções que lhe foram confiadas, permita projetar eventuais correções de rumo para retornar ao caminho pretendido e indique para onde caminha o processo de integração do MERCOSUL. / By proposing a masters thesis on the legal theory of regional integration, we intend to investigate those specific legal characteristics that do not allow it to be characterized as just another classic economic cooperation instrument between States, nor as a community organism. Despite using the legal theory of economic integration to clarify the investigation criteria, it will be in the analysis of the organic and the normative structure of MERCOSUR that we aim to investigate the peculiar nature of its law. We believe that the characterization of a block under one of the nomenclatures proposed by the regional integration theory is, in reality, a product of its derived law. Indeed, the diverse elements that concur to a characterization of this law that are the ones so may times presented as evidence that a regional block is a cooperative or a community one, defining a whole mechanism by a single piece of it. On the contrary, the masters thesis now presented exposes the initial results of our investigation about the totality of elements that concur to indicate the nature of law of the integration process in MERCOSUL. We do not intend to investigate the nature of the block just for classificatory sake. Rather, we believe identifying the unique character of MERCOSURs integration process might contribute not only to a strict analysis of the blocks performance on the functions it was once assigned but also to foresee possible corrections on its direction in order to drive the block back to its path and to indicate where the integration process is actually driving us all.

Après l’accession des pays Ouest-africains à l’indépendance, plusieurs alliances supranationales ont été scellées. Mais, la recherche de l’Union s’est faite dans une certaine contrariété idéologique car, il ya eu des panafricanistes et les chercheurs des Communautés Economiques Régionales parmi les chefs d’Etat. C’est dans ce contexte que trois organismes d’intégration firent leur apparition: il s’agit de l’Union du Fleuve Mano (UFM), la Communauté des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CEDEAO) et la Communauté des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CEAO), devenue l’UEMOA plus tard. L’UFM a été créé sur la base du voisinage géographique et en tenant compte des liens socioéconomique et culturel séculaires existant entre les peuplements identiques. Son but était de faciliter les transactions commerciales entre les populations se trouvant séparées par le tracé frontalier colonial. Mais, le vrai problème était la question de marchés. Face à la mondialisation, les pays relativement petits en termes de population ont souvent eu du mal à s’insérer dans l’économie mondiale. Ils s’organisaient au sein des ensembles de mise en commun des ressources. Cependant, de 1973 à 2014, l’UFM n’a pas réussi à transformer ses pays membres pour deux raisons : Premièrement, dans sa structure, au lieu de créer une commission régionale, les Etats membres ont mis en place un secrétariat général. Deuxièmement, en raison des crises sociopolitiques, les pays membres de l’UFM ont fait moins de réalisations concrètes / After the accession of the West African countries to independence, several supranational alliances were sealed. But, the search for the Union was done in a certain ideological contrariety because, there were panafricanists and the researchers of the Regional Economic Communities among the heads of state. It is in this context that three integration organizations emerged: the Mano River Union (UFM), the Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Community of West African States (ECOWAS). States of West Africa (CEAO), later became WAEMU. The MRU was created on the basis of geographical proximity and taking into account the centuries-old socio-economic and cultural links between identical settlements. Its purpose was to facilitate commercial transactions between populations separated by the colonial frontier. But, the real problem was the question of markets. In the face of globalization, relatively small countries in terms of population have often struggled to integrate into the global economy. They organized themselves in pools of resources. However, from 1973 to 2014, the UFM failed to transform its member countries for two reasons: First, in its structure, instead of creating a regional commission, Member States set up a general secretariat. Secondly, because of the socio-political crises, the MRU member countries have made less concrete achievements.

<p>The African Union (AU) is the continent-wide project for economic and political integration in Africa. It takes inspiration from the European Union (EU), where two major problems could be discerned. Firstly, the European and the African context differ from each other, economically,socially and politically. Secondly, the EU itself has been criticized for legitimacy problems,including ineffective decision-making processes, not satisfying tasks for the European Parliament (EP), and low voter turnout in the elections to the EP. Thus, it is interesting to ask whether it ispossible to create a legitimate African Union with the objectives to unite and strengthen the African continent through political and economic actions, when it takes inspiration from a quasisupranational organization which operates in a different political setting, and whose legitimacy hasbeen highly questioned.</p><p>The purpose of this paper was to examine and discuss whether the AU faces legitimacy problems,and if it does, what kind of legitimacy-problems? To specify the purpose, three questions were posed:</p><p>What is the status of the process of making the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) a legislativeand popularly authorized organ?</p><p>What are the AU's ambitions and means for building a common African identity?</p><p>How is the AU financed, and what can be said about the economy's effect on the AU'scapacity to perform effectively?</p><p>The conclusions show that the AU seems to be facing legitimacy problems. Firstly, a legislative organ is important in this kind of organization, and in order to be a legitimate legislative organ it is important to have the representatives elected by the people. The project of transforming the PAPinto a legislative organ has started, but to let the people elect their representatives to the PAP has notyet been provided for. Secondly, it seems like the AU have problems concerning funding. The basic means for funding the AU is through member-state contributions, and the AU suffers from outstanding payments, delayed payments, and some also argues that the member-state contributions are too small. This is a major obstacle for the union's development, since a weak economy willhinder the AU institutions' performance. The AU also stands before a huge task of creating a sharedAfrican identity – that is, creating the African demos. The ambitions for carrying out this project are expressed in different AU-documents, and the PAP have a great role in this project. Although, tostudy how this project is going was not a part of this paper's purpose and is left for further research.</p>

In the period of post-Cold War, regional integration is one of the most important trend of international politics, European Union (EU) is the most successful example at present. The EU enlargement to Central and Eastern European countries is a new challenge for itself to run the regional organization. The old EU members would conflict with new EU members for their own advantages. Central and Eastern European countries have broken away from Russia¡¦s control, and expect its modernization will be enhanced by accession to the EU, but the conditions of EU in the area of politics and economy must be reached by Central and Eastern European countries. In this thesis the EU enlargement will be analyzed by Neo-functionalism and Liberal Intergovernmentalism.

<p>Mercosur, som i dag består av Argentina, Brasilien, Paraguay, Uruguay och Venezuela, bildades 1994 i ett försök att förstärka det ekonomiska samarbetet och befästa den omogna demokratin i regionen. Regionalt samarbete inleddes även i avsikt att öka stabilitet och säkerhet i regionen då samarbetet föddes ur askan av en instabil och nedbruten ekonomi. Den dramatiska förändringen från ett inåtvänt militärt styre under större delen av 1900-talet till en liberalisering av både den ekonomiska och politiska sfären, var en annan anledning till regionalt samarbete. Den här uppsatsen behandlar sambandet mellan dessa två fenomen; regional integration och demokrati, och deras parallella utveckling. Den regionala integrationen i området kring Mercosur är annorlunda än andra integrationsprojekt genomförda i världen. Detta är till stor del på grund av den starka statliga interventionalism och presidentialism som historiskt haft en framträdande roll, tillsammans med avsaknad av insyn och brist på civil delaktighet i den politiska sfären. Dessa karakteristiska drag gör det svårt att applicera redan framtagna teorier på Mercosur då dessa främst är utarbetade med hänsyn till Europeiska Unionen. Utvecklingen mot demokrati är betraktad som nödvändighet i förändringsprocessen mot ett förbättrat regionalt samarbete och därmed också regional integration, trots att demokratin fortfarande är begränsad.</p> / <p>Mercosur, which today includes the member states Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezula, was created in 1994 in an attempt to enhance economic cooperation and consolidate democracy in the region. Regional cooperation was also initiated in order to increase stability and security in the region. This since the integration project surged out of the ashes of an unstable, broken economy and a recent shift from an introvert military regime towards a liberalisation of both the economical and the political sphere. This thesis treats the connection between these two phenomena; regional integration and democracy, and their parallel development. The regional integration through Mercosur is different to other integration projects. Among other things this is due to the strong history of state intervention and scarce civil participation, as well as a prominent presidentialism and a current lack of transparency. This makes the implementation of already existing theories that may explain the development of Mercosur hard to apply, since these theories are developed with consideration to the European Union. The development towards democracy is seen as an essential cornerstone in the shift towards a more cooperative stance between the regional neighbours. Even though democracy in the region still is of limited nature, its emergence promoted regional integration.</p>