Gauging the economic and political challenges to European integration

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Table of Contents:

  • Introduction / Barry Eichengreen, Jeffry Frieden
  • The transition to economic and monetary union / Geoffrey Garrett
  • The political economy of French economic policy in the perspective of EMU / Christian de Boissieu, Jean Pisani-Ferry
  • Macroeconomic stabilization with a common currency / Kenneth M. Kletzer
  • Economic and political integration / Lisa L. Martin
  • Banking regulation with variable geometry / Jurgen von Hagen, Michele Fratianni
  • The impact of economic integration on European wage-setting institutions / Michael Wallerstein
  • Nordic accession / Jonathon W. Moses, Anders Todal Jenssen
  • Alpine contrasts / Sven W. Arndt
  • The political economy of Eastern enlargement / Peter Bofinger.

Description

As European integration has deepened and become more invasive, the tension between the authority of the European Union and the autonomy of member states has increased, while dissatisfaction with the political institutions of the European Union has increased dramatically. How fast and how far European integration will proceed are critical issues for scholars and policymakers in Europe and the United States. Barry Eichengreen and Jeffry Frieden have assembled a group of prominent economists and political scientists to discuss the most important--and most difficult--political and economic issues involved in European integration. The book focuses on three major issues: economic and monetary union, the reform and development of responsive political institutions for the Union, and the enlargement of the Union to include states to the east.
In examining these issues, the writers consider such prob-lems as the trade-off between the benefits of international economic cooperation and the ability to pursue domestic welfare policies; how to increase the political accountability of the institutions of the EU; and how the EU can both be enlarged in membership and deepened in terms of the powers given community institutions.
The contributors are Steven Arndt, Peter Bofinger, Christian de Boisseu, Michele Fratianni, Geoffrey Garrett, Jurgen von Hagen, Ander Todal Jenssen, Ken Kletzer, Lisa Martin, Jonathan Moses, Jean Pisani-Ferry, and Michael Wallerstein, in addition to the editors.
Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley. Jeffry Frieden is Professor of Government, Harvard University.

Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley.

Jeffry Frieden is Professor of Government, Harvard University.

". . . a valuable contribution to our understanding of the political economy of European integration. The combination of formal and informal argumentation, quantitative and qualitative evidence, and political and economic perspectives make a good case that there is much to gain from interdisciplinary study of the European Union."
—Beth A. Simmons, University of California, Berkeley, American Political Science Review , March 2000

- Beth A. Simmons, University of California, Berkeley