Openness and development are key words of central importance in describing the dynamism within the present world economy. Openness denotes the entire process of internationalization and liberalization now underway in the commodity markets, factor markets and financial mar kets. Today there is hardly anational economy or company left which can afIord to ignore international dependencies. In the broadest sense of the word, development encompasses an those dynamic endogenous economic processes which create prosperity and a high standard of living via inno vation and structural change. Modem economic research has shown that both of these fields of economic causalities - which are themselves afIected by a wide variety of interdependencies - detennine the economic destiny of the national economies and of their actors in the industrial, newly industrializing, transitional and developing countries. The present volume focuses on the significance of these two key words while conveying, at the same time, an impression of the broad spectrum of related issues. It contains papers written by economists working at uni versities and research institutes as well as papers submitted by "economic practitioners"; the latter, in particular, provide valuable insights on current issues by taking account of theoretical and practical considerations. Whereas the papers printed in Part I analyze their subjects from a general perspective, the emphasis in Part TI is on specific regional aspects. Part I begins with a theoretical-empirical study on the development of foreign trade."

International economic integration is a topic upon which both academics and policy-makers are focusing a great deal of attention. This has perhaps been most marked in western Europe, given the establishing of the inter nal market and the prospects for an economic and monetary union. In parallel with the movement toward widening and deeping of western European economic integration, we find an increased integration of eastern Europe to world trade and finance as well as regional integration in North America and in East Asia. The book on hand provides a collection of recent research by leading scholars and practicians in this field. It is divided into three parts. The first part deals with some theoretical aspects of international integration, the second and the third part attend to implications of concrete forms of international integration inside and outside Europe. Part I starts with a neoclassical analysis of the impacts of factor-market integration by Franz Peter Lang. He investigates the effects on production level, production structure, demand level and structure of external trade of a "small integration area." Lang shows that the specific welfare effects of factor-market integration can only be realized if and only if external trade (between the integration area and the rest of the world) is increased too."