Studies show that redistribution costs rapidly surpass trade gains. And some of those costs are not reversible. When, for example, a given regional cluster disappears due to competition, it may never resurge again. •  If there are no compensation mechanisms, discontent will rise. The European convergence machine has partially compensated for the impacts of globalisation through cohesion policies.
Public transfers are adequate as a first, more agile, response. 2  Ridao-Cano, Cristobal; Bodewig, Christian (2018). www.bportugal.pt  7  •  However, public transfers won’t effectively solve the problem of loser communities, socially and geographically marginalised. This redistribution across communities has been shown to be empirically more important than redistribution across skill levels.