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Stresses the importance of taking domestic economic structures and political pressures into account when considering issues of international macroeconomic policy coordination. Offers a survey of the literature on national macroeconomic policy preferences and inflation unemployment tradeoffs. (Abstract amended)

The framework for fiscal policy coordination in EMU has been in effect for three years.The experience gained shows that the rule-based approach provides in principle a feasible solution for policy coordination among a large number of heterogeneous countries whose joint interest is to safeguard the credibility of the common monetary policy and smooth functioning of the EMU.At the same time, the experience indicates that the current set of rules and procedures laid down in the Maastricht Treaty and Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) suffer from complexity, lack of transparency and asymmetric incentives.The paper discusses the rationale for fiscal policy coordination in the monetary union in general and emphasises the role of fiscal rules and multilateral surveillance in ensuring discipline and long-term sustainability of public finances.The paper also considers incentive problems arising from the asymmetric nature of the SGP and weak interaction between national policy-making and EU-level policy commitments.As a possible remedy, the paper proposes complementing the SGP with medium-term expenditure rules for central governments and balanced budget requirements for lower levels of government.

Coordinated macroeconomic policy is a special element within the integration process in addition to the four freedoms usual for economic integration: free movement of goods, free movement of services, free movement of labor, and free movement of capital. Macroeconomic coordination was, from the very beginning, a key idea behind each stage of the process of Eurasian economic integration. The politico-ideological foundation of the Eurasian idea is the facilitation of growth for Eurasian countries on the basis of economic pragmatism. The macroeconomic coordination process within the Eurasian Economic Union is based on the coordination of strategic planning systems in each Member State. Strategic planning plays an important role in macroeconomic coordination. Strategic planning documents have a sound legal basis in the Treaty establishing the Eurasian Economic Union. At the same time Eurasian integration provides a platform for best practice exchanges and coordination of strategic planning between the Member States. ; Coordinated macroeconomic policy is a special element within the integration process in addition to the four freedoms usual for economic integration: free movement of goods, free movement of services, free movement of labor, and free movement of capital. Macroeconomic coordination was, from the very beginning, a key idea behind each stage of the process of Eurasian economic integration. The politico-ideological foundation of the Eurasian idea is the facilitation of growth for Eurasian countries on the basis of economic pragmatism. The macroeconomic coordination process within the Eurasian Economic Union is based on the coordination of strategic planning systems in each Member State. Strategic planning plays an important role in macroeconomic coordination. Strategic planning documents have a sound legal basis in the Treaty establishing the Eurasian Economic Union. At the same time Eurasian integration provides a platform for best practice exchanges and coordination of strategic planning between the Member States.

Economic agents (humans) exchange information and thus can consider each other's activities. This allows them to coordinate their activities. This study identifies three basic forms of coordination, depending on the communication options between agents: 1) the contractual form, which is possible with direct communications between agents; 2) the stigmergy, possible with indirect communications; 3) the common rules­based action form, possible in the absence of communications. The presentation of the observed processes of economic coordination as various combinations of these three basic forms corresponds to their description at micro level. Such a micro level representation has signs of a fundamental one, since the proposed three basic forms of coordination fully reflect the diversity of a person's natural abilities to consider the activities of other people. As an illustration, a description of the known methods of economic coordination (market, hierarchical and network) is presented as combinations of basic forms of coordination. Within the framework of this micro level approach, the features of economic activity are analyzed, which determine the structure and main characteristics of the system of economic coordination processes. The analysis showed that, at the micro level, the processes of economic coordination are a complex hybrid of the three basic forms of coordination. This approach creates a unified methodological basis for the analysis of diverse methods of coordination used in the economy. The results obtained allow one to explore directions for improving coordination processes in the economy.

We analyze within a spatial endogenous growth setting the impact of public policy coordination on regional inequality. Governments in each of the two symmetric regions provide a local public input that becomes globally effective due to integration. Micro-foundation of governmental behavior is based on three different coordination schemes: autarky, full or partial coordination. The "optimal" size of the local public inputs - as measured by the expenditure share ratios - differs depending upon the extent to which the governments take interregional interdependencies and feedback effects into account. The resulting spatial distribution of economic activity is driven by integration, which acts as dispersion force, and scale effects, which act as concentration force. The latter are drivers of regional inequality. Given full symmetry, local externalities cancel w.r.t to their impact on spatial concentration. We show that coordination of public decisions that base on productivity considerations unequivocally foster concentration and destabilize the spreading equilibrium. Regional inequality is thus an optimal result or put differently, the convergence goal can only be met by applying additional arguments.

While global coordination is absolutely essential, success in achieving it may prove difficult because economic globalization has outpaced political globalization. If we are to succeed, we will have to manage coordination better than we have in the past.

Discusses the various systems of policy coordination which have emerged since 1945. These may be classified as rule-governed systems relying on decentralized bargaining in which coordination decisions are taken collectively at the international level (eg, world economic summits). The EMS combines elements of these 2 models. (Abstract amended)