Governance of the European Monetary Union

The crisis in the euro area is a defining moment in the history of European integration. It has revealed major flaws in the architecture of the European Union; it has challenged European institutions to shape an appropriate response; and it has tested the patience of a European public that is eager to see their economic prospects improve again. This volume brings together some of the world’s top economists and policymakers to explain how this crisis came about and what is to be done. The policy agenda these chapters establish is going to be difficult to implement, not least because of popular misunderstanding and political opposition. This book argues, that it is essential that European policymakers push forward this agenda or they run the risk of seeing Europe’s economies fall back into crisis. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

Table of Contents 1. An ‘Economics’ Window on an Interdisciplinary Crisis 2. EMU: Old Flaws Revisited 3. Correcting for the Eurozone Design Failures: The Role of the ECB 4. Governance and Conditionality: Toward a Sustainable Framework? 5. Responses to the Euro Area Crisis: Measuring the Path of European Institutional Integration 6. Avoiding Another Crisis in the Euro Area: Public and Private Imbalances and National Policy Responses 7. EMU and Sustainable Integration 8. Getting the Story Right: How You Should Choose between Different Interpretations of the European Crisis (And Why You Should Care) 9. At Cross-purposes: Commercial versus Technocratic Governance of Sovereign Debt in the EU 10. The Making of a Continental Financial System: Lessons for Europe from Early American History 11. Impossible Macroeconomic Trinity: The Challenge to Economic Governance in the Eurozone 12. Using Interdisciplinary Analysis to Shape a Policy Agenda