TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Campos, Nauro F.
AU  - Coricelli, Fabrizio
AU  - Moretti, Luigi
        TI  - Norwegian Rhapsody? The Political Economy Benefits of Regional Integration
        PY  - 2015/Jun/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 9098
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp9098
        AB  - This paper investigates whether joint economic and political integration leads to larger economic benefits than just economic integration. The identification strategy rests on the fact that Norway, at the time of the 1995 Enlargement of the European Union (EU), had successfully completed negotiations and fulfilled all accession requirements, taken membership in the European Economic Area (with full access to the Single Market), but decided in a referendum to reject full-fledged EU membership. Using the differences-in-differences and synthetic control methods with regional data, we find substantial politically driven economic benefits from EU membership: if Norway had joined the EU in 1995, productivity levels between 1995 and 2001 would have been 6% higher on average.
        KW  - political economy benefits
KW  - European Union
KW  - labor productivity
KW  - synthetic counterfactual method
KW  - regional data
        ER  -