Sweden and the Euro: The Neglected Role of EU Membership

Abstract:

The economic gains from EU membership is in theory fairly straightforward and above all related to having access to the internal market. However, it is much more complicated to show empirically that countries gain from being members of the Union.

This policy brief discusses evidence from models employing a new counterfactual method that has emerged in the literature in the last 10-15 years. The authors present results suggesting that Sweden has been one of the countries that has benefitted economically the least from EU membership, which they claim has important implications in terms of benefits from the adoption of the euro.