The costs and benefits : an economic study for the Maltese business community

Abstract

Malta's EU membership is a major institutional change that the business community and policy makers consider with great care. It raises many important questions regarding the place of Malta in the world economy, the potential benefits and costs of membership or non-membership, the macroeconomic and sectoral impacts in both scenarios. The objective of this report is to gauge and provide a detailed analysis of the economic implications for Malta should it decide to join the EU or not. Both choices will have an important impact on the Maltese economy. It is clear that within a membership scenario different sector of the economy will fare differently with some doing better than others. It is the same with a non-membership scenario. The question is which scenario provides the larger benefits for the economy as a whole? It is exactly these different sectoral impacts as well as the sum total of these impacts that this study gauges as well as analyses and it does so using state-of-the-art econometric techniques.