As part of its EU strategy, the Swiss government commissioned several research projects covering the most important aspects of economic integration. Given the interesting results and the wealth of methods used in these studies we decided to organize a conference on the topic of 'The Economic Impact of EU Membership on Entrants: New Methods and Issues." The idea was to use the work on Switzerland as a case study for discussing modern approaches on how to assess the economic effects of joining an integration zone. This seemed to us to be a topic of considerable interest for the rising number of...