Effects of (dis-)integrations at the Austrian-Czech Border

Since the beginning of the 20th century the Austrian-Czech border region has been exposed to recurrent large-scale and unforeseen episodes of economic integration and disintegration. This includes: the separation of the Austro-Hungarian empire and formation of a Czechoslovak state (in 1919), the establishment of the iron curtain (after 1948), the fall of the iron curtain (in 1989), Czech accession to the EU (in 2004) and the end of the derogation periods with respect to the freedom of movement and trade of services within the EU (in 2011). As a consequence the Austrian-Czech border region provide a rich testing ground to analyze the impact of (dis-)integration of economies with large income differential on regional development, that have been a recurrent topic in many policy debates related to the regional impact of globalization and European integration. The current project will use these rich experiences to test economic theories of (dis -)integration and to through this inform policy makers and the public debate on the regional impact of potential future economic integration and globalization in the future. One important innovative aspect of the project is that the historic experiences analyzed involved countries characterized by rather different political regimes and huge and widely varying differences in incomes and costs as well as a wide range of different regions. Thus for instance in 1919 todays Czech Republic was more highly developed than Austria, while in 1989 the opposite was the case. Similarly the regions located near the border include a large set of peripheral-rural regions as well as the urban centers of Brno and Vienna. We therefore expect that the results of the richness of the regions involved and the (dis-)integration episodes analyzed will allow for a highly differentiated picture of the effects of economic (dis-)integration on regional economies. As a further innovative aspect, the project will also address some of the methodological problems facing this literature by using data at an unusually low level of regional aggregation (which for part of the analysis will be a 250x250 meter grid). This will allow for an assessment of the potential measurement error resulting from regional aggregation that has been an issue in much of the previous literature.

No additional funding sources recorded.