Question

1. What are the economic and political arguments for regional economic integration? Given these arguments, why don't we see more substantial examples of integration in the world economy? What effect is creation of a single market and a single currency within the EU likely to have on competition within the EU? Why?

Answer 1

Regional economic integration can facilitate trade, mobility of goods and services, overall development and help create one economic unitdespite separate geographical and political borders.
It can help countries to grow together as a unit. It makes resource distribution that much easier and a regional trading block can be seen as an allied force for security reasons as nations coalesce in order to promote their own economic growth and well being.
Such a regional integration is not seen often as maintaining cordial ties within an economically integrated group becomes a difficult task even though the motive behind such integration is better coordination and promoting welfare if all nations involved equally, some nations might benefit more than others and the balance if power may not be maintained as expected.
Creation of single market within EU can make it behave like a cartel in the world market as commodities tradedwithin EU is becomes cheaper compared to the one sold outside, thus the market within EU is somewhat less competitive than outside.A single currency can help facilitate trade and currency purchase within EU but such a move might also make the currency vulnerable since the integrated economies might not always be in sync and the stronger economies might have to bail out the weaker ones to maintain the power of the currency. E.g. Greek crisis.