Product details
- Categories: Monetary Policy & Euro
- Publisher: OUP - Oxford University Press
- ISBN: 9780190233242
- Publication Date: 30/04/2015
- Binding: Paperback
- Number of pages: 368
- Language: English
Summary
- A synthetic and coherent account of all aspects of the euro crisis
- Combines political with economic analysis, emphasizing the political economy aspects of the euro problem, experience, and likely future(s)
- Counters the existing and more orthodox theory of 'optimum currency areas' (OCA) by stressing the 'minimum' requirements for institutional embeddedness (or embedded currency areas - ECA)
The Future of the Euro is an attempt by political economists to analyze the fundamental causes of the euro crisis, determine how it can be fixed, and consider what likely futures lie ahead for the currency. The book makes three interrelated arguments that emphasize the primacy of political over economic factors. First, the 'euro problem' is discussed as the result of the single currency's fundamental lack of institutional embeddedness, insofar as its original design omitted three 'forgotten unions' alongside of monetary union: a financial and banking union, mutually supporting institutions of fiscal union and economic government, and a political union holding similar legitimacy to the nation-state. Second, the 'euro experience' shows how the euro's unfinished design led to economic divergence - quietly altering the existing distribution of economic and political power within Europe prior to the crisis - which in turn determined the EU's crisis response. The book highlights how the euro's four most important members - Germany, France, Italy and Spain - each changed once they adopted the euro, why the crisis affected them so differently, and how each has since struggled to live with the commitments the euro necessitates. Third, the book examines three possible 'euro futures' through the lens of the politics of its reluctant leader Germany; through the lens of the EU's capacity to 'move forward' through crises; and through the geopolitical lens of the international monetary system. The book concludes that any successful long-term solution to the euro's predicament needs to start with the political foundations of markets.
Table of contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Introduction: The Future of the Euro and the Politics of Embedded
Currency Areas
Matthias Matthijs and Mark Blyth
Section I: The Euro Problem
Chapter 2: Forgotten Embeddedness: History Lessons for the Euro
Kathleen R. McNamara
Chapter 3: Forgotten Financial Union: How You Can Have a Euro Crisis
without a Euro
Erik Jones
Chapter 4: Elusive Economic Government and Forgotten Fiscal Union
Nicolas Jabko
Chapter 5: Forgotten Democratic Legitimacy: 'Governing by the Rules' and 'Ruling by the Numbers'
Vivien A. Schmidt
Section II: The Euro Experience
Chapter 6: Germany's Euro Experience and the Long Shadow of Reunification
Abraham Newman
Chapter 7: Europe's Middle Child: France's Statist Liberalism and the
Conflicted Politics of the Euro
Mark I. Vail
Chapter 8: The Troubled South: The Euro Experience in Italy and Spain
Jonathan Hopkin
Section III: The Euro Future
Chapter 9: Europe's New German Problem: The Timing of Politics and
the Politics of Timing
Wade Jacoby
Chapter 10: European Integration Past, Present, and Future: Moving Forward
through Crisis?
Craig Parsons and Matthias Matthijs
Chapter 11: The Future of the Euro in a Global Monetary Context
Eric Helleiner
Chapter 12: Conclusion: The Future of the Euro: Possible Futures, Risks,
and Uncertainties
Matthias Matthijs and Mark Blyth
Bibliography
Index