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To Wait or Not to Wait: Swiss EU-Membership as an Investment under Uncertainty

Spirig, Beat and Weder, Rolf. (2008) To Wait or Not to Wait: Swiss EU-Membership as an Investment under Uncertainty. Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, 144 (1). pp. 85-114.

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Official URL: http://edoc.unibas.ch/43013/

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Abstract

Why do some countries join the EU earlier than others, why do others wait? In order to answer this question we apply the theory of investment under uncertainty (Dixit and Pindyck, 1994) to the decision on EU-membership. We develop a simplified model of two periods to study how the value of waiting depends among other things on the degree of uncertainty. The results give rise to a country?s position to deliberately postpone a membership in order to keep the option to join later if this is desirable. After interpreting the results we illustrate the framework by applying it to Switzerland and the new EU-members, taking into account the EU?s draft of the Constitutional Treaty. We argue that the approach provides interesting insights regarding EU-membership, in general, and the Swiss position, in particular.
Faculties and Departments:06 Faculty of Business and Economics > Departement Wirtschaftswissenschaften > Professuren Wirtschaftswissenschaften > Aussenwirtschaft und Europ. Integration (Weder)
08 Cross-disciplinary Subjects > Europainstitut > Europainstitut > Europäische Wirtschaft (Weder)
UniBasel Contributors:Weder, Rolf and Spirig, Beat
Item Type:Article, refereed
Article Subtype:Research Article
Publisher:Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES)
ISSN:0303-9692
e-ISSN:2235-6282
Note:Publication type according to Uni Basel Research Database: Journal article
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Last Modified:16 Dec 2016 07:26
Deposited On:16 Dec 2016 07:26

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