The euro area remains in a state of flux and appears to be unsustainable in its present form. The outcome of the crisis may be unknown for years and a judgement on the project’s success or failure may be out of reach for decades. In the meantime, analysts, portfolio managers and traders will still have daily, weekly, quarterly and annual benchmarks. They will have to analyze economic developments in the euro area and their impacts on financial assets. The objective of this book is to provide a framework for that analysis that is comprehensible to most financial market participants. The book begins with a focus on coincident and leading economic indicators for the euro area. The following section looks at euro-area institutions. The next chapter focuses on the euro crisis. It attempts to provide an explanation of its origins and a glimpse of the potential outcomes. In addition, the tools needed to analyze the crisis as it evolves are presented. The last sections provide information unique to the economies of Germany, France, the U.K., Switzerland, Sweden and Norway.

The financial crisis of 2007–10 has presented a number of key policy challenges for those concerned with the long-term stability of the euro area. It has shown that price stability as provided by the European Central Bank is not enough to guarantee financial stability, and exposed fault lines in governance and deficiencies in the architecture of the financial supervisory and regulatory framework. This book addresses these and other issues, including why the crisis affected some countries more than others, whether the euro is still attractive for new EU states, and what policy changes and structural reforms, both macro and micro, should be undertaken to ensure its future viability. Written by a team of leading academic and central bank economists, the book also includes chapters on the cross-country incidence of the crisis, the Irish crisis and ECB monetary policy during the crisis, and studies on Spain, the Baltics, Slovakia and Slovenia.

This book analyses the ongoing reform of the European economic union in the light of the new objective of ‘stability of the euro area as a whole’ in Article 136(3) TFEU. On the basis of the relevant legal sources, it qualifies this objective as the obligation to preserve the existence of the monetary union, the establishment of which was an EU goal laid down in Article 3(4) TEU. While to date the objective has been achieved through fiscal and macroeconomic consolidation in the member states and the activation of stabilisation mechanisms in cases of emergency, the book argues that full stability requires a better system of economic governance, either through a process of partial fiscal centralisation or the return to a more efficient and sustainable market discipline of public finances. It also analyses the concrete legal challenges these raise, including compliance with the conferral principle, the longstanding democratic deficit of the governance and the balance between financial solidarity and fiscal responsibility.

This volume offers a timely analysis of economic and monetary union at a time of heightened uncertainty about the future of the Euro. It explores the evolution of Euro area governance from the launch of the Euro in 1999 to the sovereign debt crisis that struck the Euro area in 2010.

This paper focuses on the convergence performance of euro area countries before and after euro introduction. The analysis compares per capita incomes across countries, both for the initial group of twelve countries that adopted the euro before 2002 (the so-called EA-12) as well as the current group of 19 euro area members (EA-19). The convergence process has stalled since the introduction of the euro, except for new euro area members which reduced their income gaps vis-à-vis the founding members until their adoption of the common currency. The convergence of income levels is not a prerequisite for a functioning monetary union, but has been considered an important objective of the European economic integration process. Lagging productivity growth in countries with lower initial GDP per capita is found to be the main explanation for the lack of convergence, suggesting that structural reforms can help to restart the convergence process.

A non-technical analysis of the monetary policy strategy, institutions and operational procedures of the Eurosystem, first published in 2001.

How philosophical differences between Eurozone nations led to the Euro crisis—and where to go from here Why is Europe's great monetary endeavor, the Euro, in trouble? A string of economic difficulties in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and other Eurozone nations has left observers wondering whether the currency union can survive. In this book, Markus Brunnermeier, Harold James, and Jean-Pierre Landau argue that the core problem with the Euro lies in the philosophical differences between the founding countries of the Eurozone, particularly Germany and France. But the authors also show how these seemingly incompatible differences can be reconciled to ensure Europe’s survival. As the authors demonstrate, Germany, a federal state with strong regional governments, saw the Maastricht Treaty, the framework for the Euro, as a set of rules. France, on the other hand, with a more centralized system of government, saw the framework as flexible, to be overseen by governments. The authors discuss how the troubles faced by the Euro have led its member states to focus on national, as opposed to collective, responses, a reaction explained by the resurgence of the battle of economic ideas: rules vs. discretion, liability vs. solidarity, solvency vs. liquidity, austerity vs. stimulus. Weaving together economic analysis and historical reflection, The Euro and the Battle of Ideas provides a forensic investigation and a road map for Europe’s future.