The Economics of Secession

Secession has become this decade's single most important issue - a worldwide phenomenon, threatening violence, instability and a radical redrawing of international boundaries. While the literature on secession has focused on issues of politics and ethnicity, there has been very little written on the economic issues involved: Dr Bookman's new work goes a long way to correcting this. The Economics of Secession studies some thirty contemporary secession movements and traces the changing role played by economics before, during, and after secession: in the evaluation of the costs and benefits associated with respective unions, in the disentanglement of mutual ties, and in the determination of a region's future viability as a separate state. It is additionally argued that economic factors will become ever more important in the future redrawing of frontiers. This is an extremely significant contribution to the understanding of an ever more unstable world.