Lecture given at the Conference "International Economic Integration: Firms, Workers, and Policies", in honour of Wilhelm Kohler's
65th birthday, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen
In this laudation of Wilhelm Kohler's 65th birthday I firstly will do a retrospective on the fight for Europe by Willi and
me at the same time with different methods. We both did research around Austria's accession to the EU. We made several ex-ante
studies about the possible economic impact of EU membership. The expected effects on GDP and trade were positive. This was
then verified in ex-post studies. At that time the EU only was in the stage of the Single Market. Later it continued its process
of deepening (EMU with the introduction of the Euro) and enlarging. Lastly the EU increased to 28 members. These integration
steps gave enough impetus for Willi and me to do respective research. Research has also been done on the reform of the SGP
and the several tries to reform the EMU after the Euro crisis. The Brexit is a new challenge not only politically, but economically.
After discussing the present multiplicity of problems of the EU (Brexit, Euro crisis, migration problem) and a reflexion of
the already existing reform proposals I try to develop a vision for a new (institutional) future for Europe: a dissolution
of the present EU and a new foundation as the United States of Europe.
JEL-Codes:F15; C51; O52
Keywords:European Integration; Model simulations; country studies
Forschungsbereich:Makroökonomie und öffentliche Finanzen