Institutional and Geographic Forms of Economic Integration

The elaboration contains a classification of economic integration taking into consideration two criteria: institutional and geographic. Classifying integration institutionally the author used B. Balassy’s formulation from 1962, supplementing it by additional elements. Included among them should be first of all the division of institutional forms into simple (facilitating the flow of goods and services) and complex (facilitating the flow of production factors or favouring the arising of new connections). Included in the first group were: free trade zone and customs union, in the second one: common market, monetary union, economic union, political union and full economic integration.
Taking as a basis the geographic criterion economic integration was classified with a division into subregional, regional and global. The paper contains a discussion of the co-dependence between all institutional forms and also between subregional and regional integration.
The theoretical analysis was also supplemented by a discussion of examples of regional integration.