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Looking at the integration of nations through the lens of the merger of populations: Preliminary superadditivity and impossibility results

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics volume 146, pages 661–675 (2010)Cite this article

Summary

This paper looks at the integration of regions and nations through the prism of the merger of populations. The paper employs a particular index of social dismay. It presents examples of two of the main results arising from the study of the merger of two populations: that the social dismay of an integrated population is greater than the sum of the social dismay of the constituent populations when apart, and that a self-contained, non-publicly financed policy aimed at retaining the levels of wellbeing of individuals at their pre-merger magnitudes cannot be implemented: there is not enough of a gain to compensate for the loss.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universities of Bonn, Klagenfurt, Vienna, Austria

    Oded Stark

  2. Warsaw School of Economics, Warsaw University, Poland

    Oded Stark

  3. ZEF, University of Bonn, Walter-Flex-Strasse 3, D-53113, Bonn, Germany

    Oded Stark

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  1. Oded Stark
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Correspondence to Oded Stark.

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This is a drastically shortened version of a keynote address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, Fribourg, June 2010. I am indebted to Franz Rendl and Marcin Jakubek for constructive comments. The support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Poland is gratefully acknowledged.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Stark, O. Looking at the integration of nations through the lens of the merger of populations: Preliminary superadditivity and impossibility results. Swiss J Economics Statistics 146, 661–675 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399332

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