Suchergebnisse

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)

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)

Economic shocks often permeate borders generating comovement in nations ́business cycles over time. We highlight the fact that fiscal policy coordination is an important avenue by which national economies become more integrated, influencing the transmission of macroeconomic shocks between countries. We find that changes in fiscal policy coordination - as measured by the signing of a bilateral tax treaty - increase business cycle comovement by 1/2 a standard deviation. This magnitude is one-and-a-half times larger than the effect of trade linkages, and is in sharp contrast to currency union membership, which has a near zero and statistically insignificant effect on business cycle comovement. We also find that new bilateral tax treaties increase comovement in shocks to nations ́GDP trends, demonstrating the permanent effects of fiscal policy coordination.

The article refers to the controversial debate on the efficiency of German EU policy coordination. On the basis of a five-month participant observation in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the hypothesis of the over-efficiency of EU coordination is developed. Over-efficiency is characterised by a functionally organised but purely technocratic preparation of EU policy without the participation of the general public, political parties, and national parliament. By having considerably increased the efficiency of EU policy coordination in recent years, German policy makers have therefore potentially undermined the acceptance of European integration as a whole. (German Politics / FUB)