Publications
- Siegmund Warburg, the City and the Financial Roots of European Integration
- Download: PDF 182.6 KB
- by Ferguson, Niall
- The economic integration of Western Europe after the Second World War proceeded by a
circuitous route. It began with the creation of a "Community" to regulate the production
and pricing of coal and steel in six European states: West Germany, France, Italy,
Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The Treaty of Rome then created a
"Common Market", formally prohibiting barriers on trade between these countries. Trade
between them had been growing rapidly before the formation of this European Economic
Community; it continued to grow thereafter—as did world trade generally. However, in
other respects economic integration proceeded slowly. In agriculture the development of an integrated market was positively hindered by the persistence of national subsidies until
a Common Agricultural Policy superseded these. In manufacturing, too, national
governments continued to resist pan-European competition by subsidizing politically
sensitive sectors or by imposing non-tariff barriers. Such practices were less frequently
adopted in the case of services, but only because services were less easily traded across
national boundaries even under conditions of perfect free trade. In short, national markets
were not being integrated because they were not really being liberalized. The exception to
this rule was financial services, one of which—the sale of long-term corporate and public
sector bonds to relatively wealthy investors—became integrated in a quite novel way in
the course of the 1960s.
- Publication Type: WCFIA Working Paper
- Published Date: November 2004
- Field of Interest: International Economics
- Ferguson, Niall. "Siegmund Warburg, the City and the Financial Roots of European Integration." Working Paper 2008-0123, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, November 2004.
