The Effects of joining the EU ofn Value-added trade

This paper aims to find the effects of joining the European Union and the Euro area on value-added trade and ‘openness’ of the countries towards international trade, using panel data of the 12 countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007, of which 7 also joined the Euro area. The research period is from 1995 to 2011, and control variables on education, unemployment and the countries’ gdp were used. Loosely based on the ‘five stylized facts ‘from Johnson (2014) and Johnson and Noguera (2014), four hypotheses were used to assess the effects of joining the EU and the Euro area on value-added trade, in absolute terms and as a percentage of total GDP of the respective countries. The results show that the effects of joining the European Union and the Euro area seem to be positive, but there are big differences across sectors, which coincides with findings of the existing literature