Why Should Countries Form Regions?

Abstract

What is the advantage that countries see in a region, over the country or global level, and does the region damage non-members? These are long-standing problems in both economic and political theory. A region combines internal liberalization and external defining or strengthening of a unit within the multilateral system, and is therefore very different from either single-country or multilateral liberalization. Analysis must look at both aspects, at the effects of each on the members and on the rest of the world, and discover the balance of the positive and negative results.