Regional economic integration and the volume of intra-regional trade: a comparison of developed and developing country experience.

Finds that economic integration among developing countries can have the same beneficial effect on intra-member trade that it does among developed countries. Also finds that the effects of trade preferences on integration are influenced by the level of development of the integrating countries and by the distance between them. Fortunately, from the standpoint of developing countries, the level of per capita income encountered in most of these countries is not so low as to represent an absolute barrier to the creation of effective integration schemes. Distance, on the other hand, has a powerful depressing effect on the ability of preference schemes to increase intra-member trade. -from Authors