Working Paper Series
No 594:
Who Wants Political Integration? Evidence from the Swedish EU-Membership Referendum
Jonas Vlachos ()
Abstract: The regional voting pattern of the Swedish EU-membership
referendum is analyzed to determine voters' preferences over two fiscal
regimes: an autonomous Sweden, or Sweden as part of the EU. A major
difference between these regimes is that autonomy gives greater national
discretion to handle risk-sharing and redistribution between regions. I
find that inhabitants of rich and stable regions, with high levels of
schooling, small receipts of central government transfers, and trade
relations displaying comparative advantages towards the EU were relatively
positive to membership. A plausible interpretation is thus that voters in
safe and rich regions voted in favor of dismantling the Swedish transfer
system.
Keywords: Political Integration; Secession; Regional Risk-Sharing; Regional Redistribution; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: F15; H11; H70; (follow links to similar papers)
19 pages, May 4, 2003
Before downloading any of the electronic versions below
you should read our statement on
copyright.
Download GhostScript
for viewing Postscript files and the
Acrobat Reader for viewing and printing pdf files.
Full text versions of the paper:
WP594.pdf 
Download Statistics
Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Elisabeth Gustafsson ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ()
or Helena Lundin ().
Programing by
Design by Joachim Ekebom
