Gancia, Gino A.Ponzetto, Giacomo A. M.Ventura, JaumeUniversitat Pompeu Fabra. Departament d'Economia i Empresa2020-05-252020-05-252019-08-01Journal of Monetary Economics, 109, 2020, 107-127.http://hdl.handle.net/10230/44722After decades of successful growth, economic unions have recently become the focus of heightened political controversy. We argue that this is partly due to the growth of trade between countries that are increasingly dissimilar. We develop a theoretical framework to study the e§ects on trade, income distribution and welfare of economic unions that di§er in size and scope. Our model shows that political support for international unions can grow with their breadth and depth as long as member countries are su¢ ciently similar. However, di§erences in economic size and factor endowments can trigger disagreement over the value of unions between and within countries. The model is consistent with some salient features of the process of European integration and statistical evidence from survey data.application/pdfengL'accés als continguts d'aquest document queda condicionat a l'acceptació de les condicions d'ús establertes per la següent llicència Creative Commons