Germany since the Fall of the Iron Curtain: The Real Income Effects of Growing Integration in the World Economy

Germany's economy has become far more "open" since 1990 for a variety of reasons including the fall of the Iron Curtain, the accession of 16 new EU members, China's rise and WTO accession, the introduction of the euro, the creation of the Schengen Area and Germany's signature of various EU free trade agreements with third-party countries. An empirical analysis conducted on behalf of the German Council of Experts shows that if all of the liberalisation measures taken to date were to be repealed, prosperity in Germany would fall by 5.3%.