Description
The dramatic evolution of financial markets in the 1980s and 1990s, accompanied by increasing institutional integration between nations (most notably in the EU), have fostered a widespread belief that governments – particularly those of small economies – have essentially lost the power to pursue sovereign, independent economic policies. At the same time, it is widely assumed that the loss of monetary-policy control is a major opportunity cost for a country adopting a rigid exchange-rate regime or, in the European context, for countries joining the EMU. This volume assesses the impact of monetary and financial integration on small “open-economy”, “policy-taking” countries in western Europe.
