The Sequencing of Regional Economic Integration: Issues in the Breadth and Depth of Economic Integration in the Americas

Date: September 9-10

Location: Mendoza College of Business, Room 162
Cost: $100. Free to Notre Dame Faculty and Students. To Register email Julie Jack

Click here for conference agenda and speakers

Overview

Scholars and policy makers will convene at the University of Notre Dame to discuss trade agreements such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and develop guidelines for the appropriate level of future trade integration in Latin America.

The conference is sponsored by the University of Notre Dame's Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Mendoza College of Business, The Coca-Cola Company, and the Inter-American Development Bank.

In light of the breakdown in progress of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the conference aims to provide a forum for scholars and policymakers to consider better models of the process of economic integration.

Although there are many examples of regional economic integration from around the world, national and international policy makers still lack a solid understanding of the 'process' by which a region decides to move toward broader and deeper integration.

The purpose is to better frame economic and political issues, and to develop a better sense of which agreements should be pursued. Ideally, it is hoped that the conference will help to develop at set of guidelines to aid the process of economic integration.

The conference will include contributed papers and discussions by prominent academic trade economists and political scientists from Chicago, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Wisconsin and numerous other universities, as well as speeches and panel discussions by prominent policy makers from the International Monetary Fund, Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank and other institutions.

Conference organizers include Jeffrey Bergstrand, professor of Finance in the Mendoza College of Business and Kellogg Faculty Fellow; Antoni Estevadeordal, Principal Economist in the Trade and Integration Department of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC; and Simon Evenett, Professor of International Economics at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and Non-Resident Fellow of the Brookings Institution.
More information can be found at http://www.nd.edu/~jbergstr/sequencing.htm.