The Political Economy of the Eurozone

Description

The Eurozone is not a mere currency area. It is also a unique polity whose actors span multiple levels (supranational, national, regional, sectoral) and pursue overlapping economic and political objectives. Current thinking on the Eurozone relies on received categories that struggle to capture these constitutive features. This book addresses this analytical deficit by proposing a new approach to the political economy of the Eurozone, which captures economic and political interdependencies across different levels of decision making and sheds light on largely unexplored problems. The book explores the opportunities afforded by the structure of the Eurozone, and lays the foundations of a political economy that poses new questions and requires new answers. It provides categories that are firmly grounded in the existing configuration of the Eurozone, but are a precondition for overcoming the status quo in analysis and policy.

Ivano Cardinale is Lecturer in Economics at Goldsmiths, University of London and Visiting Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. At Goldsmiths, he teaches macroeconomics and methods of economic analysis. He also teaches history of economic thought in the Faculties of Economics and History of the University of Cambridge. D'Maris Coffman is Senior Lecturer in Economics, The Bartlett School, University College London, and Honorary Fellow of the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance at Judge Business School, Cambridge. She is a Managing Editor (along with Professor Scazzieri) of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, an Associate Editor of Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, and Senior Editor of Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance. Roberto Scazzieri is Professor of Economic Analysis at Universita degli Studi, Bologna, Italy, and Fellow of the National Lincei Academy, Rome. He is also Senior Member of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. His intellectual biography has been included in volume I of The Makers of Modern Economics (edited by A. Heertje, 1993), together with the biographies of Partha Dasgupta, Takashi Negishi, Ariel Rubinstein, Richard Selten and Joseph Stiglitz.

'This wide-ranging collection of essays brings a new level of sophistication to the analysis of the Eurozone. It considers the complex interrelationships of past and present, of different levels of aggregation and varying interests, to offer an original and searching approach to a vital topic.' Martin Daunton, University of Cambridge 'So far, no country has left the Eurozone or been expelled. Membership keeps expanding despite widespread and well-argued doubts by both economists and political scientists of its long-run feasibility. The accumulated advantages of the common currency as experienced across and within the member countries may well be the key to its continued survival. To sustain the Eurozone, however, policy makers will have to implement the kinds of analyses made both across and within all the social sciences as shown by the authors here.' Larry D. Neal, University of Illinois