Euro Adoption in Central And Eastern Europe: Opportunities And Challenges

Book Description

Drawing on numerous interviews with high-ranking and founding members of the European Central Bank (ECB), Karl Kaltenthaler identifies and explains the factors that shape the bank's domestic and international monetary strategies. The policy-making model that offers the best roadmap to a healthy economy is that of the German Bundesbank. To secure the long-term needs of the economy, the decisionmakers in the ECB have created a model that attempts to replicate the Bundesbank's success at the European level and to lend credibility to their own policies. Offering unprecedented access to internal decisionmaking at the ECB, Policymaking in the European Central Bank will interest readers who want to understand this important European institution.

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A decent introduction to what's going on with the world's money
A Good Read!
A Good Read!

The Future of Money
Benjamin J. Cohen
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0691116660

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Is globalization leading us toward a world of fewer and fewer currencies and, consequently, simplified monetary management? Many specialists believe this is the case, as the territorial monopolies national governments have long claimed over money appears to be eroding. In The Future of Money, Benjamin Cohen argues that this view--which he calls the "Contraction Contention"--is wrong. Rigorously argued, written with extraordinary clarity, and thoroughly up-to-date, this book demonstrates that the global population of currencies is set to expand greatly, not contract, making monetary governance more difficult, not less.

At the book's core is an innovative theoretical model for understanding the strategic preferences of states in monetary management. Should governments defend their traditional monetary sovereignty, or should they seek some kind of regional consolidation of currencies? The model offers two broad advances. First, whereas most scholarly work evaluates strategic options individually or in comparison to just one other alternative, this model emphasizes the three-dimensional nature of the decisions involved. Second, the model emphasizes degrees of currency regionalization as a central determinant of state preferences. Cohen also systematically explores the role of the private sector as an alternative source of money.

The book concludes with two key policy proposals. First, fiscal policy should be resurrected as a tool of macroeconomic management, to offset the present-day erosion in the effectiveness of monetary policy. Second, the International Monetary Fund should more actively help coordinate the decentralized strategic decision-making of governments. The future of money will be perilous. But, by mapping out the alternative policies countries can follow, The Future of Money shows it need not be chaotic.

Customer Reviews:

A decent introduction to what's going on with the world's money.......2006-08-04

I'm not an economist so I might be rating this book higher or lower than someone who knows this stuff, but for the lay person it was a pretty good read. One thing to note up front is that this is more of an academic book than the normal pop-econ books that most of us are used to seeing. The paragraphs are heavily cited and the reader is assumed to know at least a little about modern international finance (I had to spend some time on wikipedia more than a few times).

Cohen spends most of the book laying out the arguments to why most economists think that the number of currencies in the world is going to contract (down to only the dollar, euro, and yen), with hints of his upcoming argument. Then in the last chapter he lays out his argument which claims that the number of currencies is going to rise in the near future. I learned quite a bit about international monetary policies from most of the book and became pretty convinced of his arguments that we won't ever have a world with just three currencies, but I found his argument for many more currencies pretty weak. It seemed like he just plopped that last chapter on quickly feeling the need to talk about the internet. And he used the word 'flooz' way too much to be respected.

To summerize, I found the book worth the time spent to read it (which is a lot better than most pop-econ books) and although I think his ending arguments were weak I don't necessarily think that he's wrong.

A Good Read!.......2004-04-23

This book is a thoughtful, amply documented reflection on the future of currency. The dollar, euro and yen dominate the global monetary order, with the dollar now unrivaled at the top and unlikely to be threatened in the future. The countries that issue lesser currencies face a trade-off between monetary sovereignty and international acceptability (with all its economic advantages). Some economists say these lesser currencies should simply dollarize, that is, sacrifice their monetary sovereignty on the altar of international economic efficiency by adopting a stronger currency as their own. Author Benjamin J. Cohen argues that these countries are likely to reject dollarization because the emotional and political advantages of issuing one's own currency are simply too strong. He suggests various alternate mechanisms that allow countries to maintain some monetary independence and authority while gaining the advantages of a fully liquid, widely used currency. Non-specialists may find his extensive discussions a bit dry or sometimes tedious, but we applaud the author's ability to explore monetary economics in admirably lucid detail.

A Good Read!.......2004-03-09

European Economies in Transition: In Search of a New Growth Path

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European Economies in Transition: In Search of a New Growth Path

Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

This book focuses on the structural changes in private enterprises and public institutions that aim at lifting the continental productive system onto a higher growth path. Organized along three research lines, the chapters offer new, provocative treatments of the adjustments in monetary and real sectors accompanying the European economic integration, the consequences of specific legal/institutional changes, and national systems of technological and institutional innovation. Given the fundamental changes of policy regimes involved, only a comparative (to some extent, eclectic) conceptual framework may provide insights about the ultimate economic state eventually reached and the manifold of processes leading towards it. The unifying feature of the book lies in its attempt to highlight the complementary roles of private and public sectors in promoting technology, human capital and institutional engineering as the ingredients in any successful recipe for growth and convergence.

The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union (Cornell Studies in Political Economy)

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The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union (Cornell Studies in Political Economy)
Kathleen R. McNamara
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0801486025

Book Description

Why have the states of Europe agreed to create an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and a single European currency? What will decide the fate of this bold project? This book explains why monetary integration has deepened in Europe from the Bretton Woods era to the present day. McNamara argues that the development of a neoliberal economic policy consensus among European leaders in the years after the first oil crisis was crucial to stability in the European Monetary System and progress towards EMU. She identifies two factors, rising capital mobility and changing ideas about the government's proper role in monetary policymaking, as critical to the neoliberal consensus but warns that unresolved social tensions in this consensus may provoke a political backlash against EMU and its neoliberal reforms.

McNamara's findings are relevant not only to European monetary integration, but to more general questions about the effects of international capital flows on states. Although this book delineates a range of constraints created by economic interdependence, McNamara rejects the notion that international market forces simply dictate government policy choice. She demonstrates that the process of neoliberal policy change is a historically dependent one, shaped by policymakers' shared beliefs and interpretations of their experiences in the global economy.

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European Republic: Reflections on the Political Economy of a Future Constitution
Stefan Collignon
Manufacturer: The Federal Trust
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1903403510
Release Date: 2007-09-04

Book Description

Part of a broader project on the impact of European Monetary Union (EMU), carried out by the Bertelsmann Foundation in co-operation with the Center for Applied Policy Research at the University of Munich, this project, "The Consequences of the Euro," focuses on modeling a European political system able to live up to the changes as well as the risks involved in handling a common currency.

Stefan Collignon reflects on the political economy of a future European constitution. He explores in particular the elusive economic and monetary policy mix that is called for within the developing framework of European integration, the issues of fiscal federalism and subsidiarity, and contrasting voluntary policy co-ordination. He also balances the demands of the Stability and Growth Pact with the embryonic consensual foundations of a European welfare function. Professor Collignon argues that collective action problems require a courageous step forward in creating coherent governance structures for the Union and that it has become essential to give European citizens their democratic right to political autonomy, taking the European "common concern" out of the sole hands of national governments.

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BRILLIANT! There's SO much good to be said about this book...

Superb demolition of the EU

Overwhelming

Excellent

the best work written on the process of monetary integration

The Rotten Heart of Europe: The Dirty War for Europe's Money
Bernard Connolly
Manufacturer: Faber & Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0571175201

Customer Reviews:

BRILLIANT! There's SO much good to be said about this book..........2007-01-07

If you wanted to know really what is going on in the EC, this is the book to read. It will give you insights into the political systems, which influences the monetary system, trading and the agenda they are following. Not to mention their bullying of countries to get their way.

When was the last time in a civilized, DEMOCRATIC society have we seen free speech outlawed? How about now. Now in the EU it is against the lau to express you opinion, your criticism, of what the political beast is doing. That means you cannot speak out against wrong doings of institutions and political figures.

That ruling alone did away with British common Law and over 50 years of european civil liberties. Where will it end? A totalitarian regime?

Some say THAT is just around the corner.

The author of this book got into HOT water for writing it. I hope this is not something that will foreshadow this type of activity happening here.

This book is a wake up call. If it is happening in the EU, what kind of ramifications will fall on us?

I have bought this as a present for friends interested in monetary policy and international affairs. I shudder to think of the impact the EU will have with a weakened US international policy. I can only envision them as growing threat to us economically and shudder to think of how a potentially fascist EU.

Buy this book.

Superb demolition of the EU.......2001-05-15

Review of The Rotten Heart of Europe: the dirty war for Europe's money, by Bernard Connolly, Faber & Faber, 1995, £17.50.

THIS BRILLIANT book is a devastating exposure of the pretensions of those who want to rule Europe. It shows that the attempts to achieve monetary and economic union, and consequently political union, are bad for us. They will not bring monetary stability, economic growth or political harmony. Instead they will destabilise currencies, reduce growth and promote hatred between the nations of Europe.

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is supposed to build on the experience of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). Britain's membership of the ERM forced us into a disastrous and quite unnecessary recession. After two years of suffering, Major said in July 1992 that Britain would soon be the leader of the ERM. Two months later, we were well out of it, and ERM had bermbed, as Jacques Clouseau, Major's mentor, would say.

ERM constrained British Government policy on non-monetary matters too. The Government appeased Spain over the fishing dispute to keep Spain happy about the sterling/peseta rate. So the Common Fisheries Policy, so damaging to Britain's fishing industry, is not an isolated EU aberration: it stems from the whole logic of economic and monetary union.

The ERM was described as the Eternal Recession Mechanism; EMU is likely to be Even More Useless. The ERM kept the poor countries poor; it did not help them to converge; it certainly did not help them to meet the Maastricht criteria. Spain's experience of ERM was catastrophic: 22% unemployed. The ERM forced Denmark into recession: unemployment doubled to 12%, the budget was slashed, and investment, output and wages all fell. In the ERM, Ireland's unemployment soared from 11% to 23%. ERM subordinated nations' economic interests to minorities' foreign policy goals: ruling class interests dominated working class interests. Some still claim that ERM and EMU could control capital, but actually they were and are attacks on the working class.

A 1992 report by the Monetary Committee, which advises the EU's Council of Ministers, admitted that ERM did not stabilise prices or money and did not reduce inflation. Perhaps it was after all just a tool for moving countries towards political union.

The book also depicts the present dangerous struggle between the French and German ruling classes for control over the proposed institutions of a single European state. Germany is determined to keep the Deutschmark and the Bundesbank: it wants EMU so that it can assimilate other countries into an expanded Deutschmark zone. France wants a new currency and wants to get its hands on the Bundesbank; it pushed for the Maastricht Treaty, which would destroy the Deutschmark. Who would control Europe's currency? Who would control the proposed new European Central Bank? Germany or France?

As Wilhelm Nolling, a Bundesbank Council member, said: "We should be under no illusion - the present controversy over the new European monetary order is about power, influence and the pursuit of national interests."

They are already fighting about the 1996 InterGovernmental Conference. Germany wants the economic criteria for EMU met as soon as possible: it insists that economic convergence must precede monetary union. France wants the earliest possible date for monetary union, believing that monetary union would produce economic convergence. Both are wrong of course: convergence cannot and will not be achieved, either way.

EMU's implications are universally unpopular. The workers of France, Italy and Belgium are striking against the EU's schemes. The Austrian Government fell in October, unable to pass the EU-required budget.

We can see both from ERM's effects, and from the effects of the attempted imposition of the Maastricht criteria, how damaging membership of EMU would be. It would cause, as intended, a permanent lowering of wages, a permanently higher level of unemployment, and massive cuts in public spending.

Connolly sums up: "My central thesis is that the ERM and EMU are not only inefficient but also undemocratic: a danger not only to our wealth but to our freedoms and ultimately, our peace. The villains of the story - some more culpable than others - are bureaucrats and self-aggrandizing politicians. The ERM is a mechanism for subordinating the economic welfare, democratic rights and national freedom of citizens of the European countries to the will of political and bureaucratic elites whose power-lust, cynicism and delusions underlie the actions of the vast majority of those who now strive to create a European superstate. The ERM has been their chosen instrument, and they have used it cleverly."

Overwhelming.......2000-10-23

Bernard Connolly was fired by the European bureaucrats after this book came out. If you read this book you will understand why. This book has all the detail you could ask for. It is an incredible expose of the events leding up to European Monetary Union.

If you support the European Community, reading this book will change your mind -- if you dare read it.

Excellent.......1999-03-22

Excellent work. The reality at the core of all the pomp-and-circumstance surrounding EMU. Read it and be wiser.

the best work written on the process of monetary integration.......1998-05-12

Bernard Connelly has written the consummate "expose" on the Maastricht treaty and the process of European monetary integration. Connelly, a former member of the European Commission, blows the lid off the Maastricht treaty and the intransigence of Jaques Delors and the Kohl-Mitterand relationship, which led to the European Monetary Union (EMU) provisions in Maastricht. This is at heart story of the politics of monetary policy, especially the failed Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), with three primary themes: the primacy of politics in determining monteray policy, the role of "vision" and "ideology" in determining policy, and the comedy of errors which was the ERM. One should not let the economics of this book prevent them from reading it. At heart, this is a great story and has the intrigue of the best historical novel. Connelly has written a factual tale containing a heroine (Baroness Thatcher), villians (Delors, Kohl, Trichet, Mitterand, Tietmeyer), and Alphandery, the innocent whistle-blower who brings the ERM crashing down. Connelly provides any reader interested in knowing about the lunacy of European monetary integration just why this idea is flawed, and provides economic evidence to defend his primary arguments. Among the more important and convincing conclusions reached in this work are: the necessity of flexible exchange rates, the inherent negatives of Europhilism (and especially Franco-philism, since "Europe" is seen as way to prevent the rise of "Anglo-Saxon" institutions), and the belief in free, competitive markets. A final comment one feels obligated to make about this book is its timeliness, and his villification of France, which is supported by following the recent row over the control of the European Central Bank. If one wants to read one book on why the EMU was really founded, and why it won't work-this is the book.

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Euro: Impact and Reality
Chris Charlton
Manufacturer: Financial Times/Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Understanding the Euro: The Clear and Concise Guide to the New Trans-European Currency

ASIN: 0273638777

Book Description

The global financial and corporate markets face an unprecedented challenge--introducing the Euro. This is the practitioners guide to the issues, problems and risks of tackling that challenge. Do we have the systems and tools to deal with this risk? This comprehensive and practical book will be a working assistant to managers, particularly in financial services, facing this new task.

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1992
Tony Cutler , Colin Haslam , John Williams , and Karel Williams
Manufacturer: Berg Publishers Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0854965963

Appointing Central Bankers: The Politics of Monetary Policy in the United States and the European Monetary Union (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)

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Appointing Central Bankers: The Politics of Monetary Policy in the United States and the European Monetary Union (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)
Kelly H. Chang
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521823331

Book Description

Focusing on how the President and the Senate influence monetary policy by appointing Federal Reserve Board members, this book answers three questions about the appointment process and its effects. First, do politicians influence monetary policy via Federal Reserve appointments? Second, who influences the process--only the President or the President and the Senate? Third, how is the structure of the Federal Reserve appointment process explained? The study extends the analysis of the Federal Reserve Board to the European Central bank.

Download Description

This book examines monetary policy by focusing on how the President and the Senate influence monetary policy by appointing Fed members. The book attempts to answer three questions about the appointment process and its effects. First, do politicians influence monetary policy via Fed appointments? Second, who influences the process - the President alone or both the President and the Senate? Third, what explains the structure of the Fed appointment process? The test models show that the President alone, both the President and Senate, or neither, may influence monetary policy with Fed appointments. The structure of the process reflects political battles between the Democrats and Republicans regarding the centralization of authority to set monetary policy within the Federal Reserve System. It extends the analysis of the Fed to the European Central Bank and shows that the Fed process guarantees a process which is more representative of society compared to the ECB process.

Book Description

The overseas Chinese and the Chinese of Taiwan and Hong Kong are among the most dynamic business people in Asia. Making up around six per cent of the population of Southeast Asia, ethnic Chinese business people control more than 70 per cent of the region's corporate wealth. Understanding how the overseas Chinese do business and the borderless networks they control is critical to an understanding of how business is done in Asia. This study - the most comprehensive yet of overseas Chinese business in Asia - is the culmination of extensive interviews, surveys, and research conducted in Australia and Across Asia.

The overseas Chinese entrepreneurs in East Asia: Background, business practices and international networks (CEDA monograph)

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The overseas Chinese entrepreneurs in East Asia: Background, business practices and international networks (CEDA monograph)
David C. L Chng
Manufacturer: Committee for Economic Development of Australia
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: 0858012081

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