Suchergebnisse

Economic policy is facing crises on multiple fronts. With the effects of the last financial crisis still with us, it is now faced with the new challenges of post-Covid economic recovery and dealing with the negative effects of over consumption on the climate. This book explores the future of economic policy in relation to what the author sees as the four great policy challenges of the first half of the 21st century: the after effects of the last financial crisis and the catastrophic impact of the Covid pandemic, secular stagnation, growing poverty and inequality, and globalization. The existence of these economic problems has become increasingly relevant since some of the tools available to public action have become useless. As economists begin to suggest new instruments of economic policy, this book will help the reader understand the nature of the economic and political facts that influence both current and future generations.

"This Chapter deals with the steps of the European construction and its structure. It also hints at the issues arising from an incomplete union. The foundations of European integration can be traced to issues raised immediately after WWII (Baldwin, Wyplosz, 2006). The central question was political: 'How can Europe avoid another war?' It can then be easily understood that the current step of the integration, i.e. the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) , is the result of a non linear process, much 'less an economic project than a political one' (Minkinnen, Patomäki, 2012: 9). In particular, in the minds of a large part of the European élites it was a step toward European political unification."

The paper deals first with the asymmetries existing in the European Monetary Union (EMU) between the peripheral countries and core countries. Macroeconomic imbalances in terms of public budget and current account descended from these asymmetries and from the EMU institutional set-up. The paper also investigates the theoretical inspirations – based on monetarist and rational expectations theories - and the country and sectional interests underlying this set-up. Theoretical progress has however intervened in the last couple of decades that makes this set up obsolete. The need for new institutions then arises, even if their realization is contrasted especially by core countries. After designing the desirable goals of a new Monetary Union, the paper indicates the need for a more democratic Union and a possible articulation of new common institutions. The possibility of a country's exit from the Union and the costs and benefits related to this process are also discussed. Even if net costs might derive in the short run, the threat of exit can add to its bargaining power subject to the hegemony of core countries.