Macroeconomic Policy Coordination in Europe: The ERM and Monetary Union

Despite the progression towards the formation of European Monetary Union (EMU) there still exists considerable disagreement between economists about the relative merits of the current European Monetary System (EMS), EMU and a return to independent policy under floating exchange rates.

This book is designed to contribute to this debate on monetary union in Europe by using large scale macroeconomic models of the world economy, including the OECD interlink model and the widely used NiGEM model, to evaluate the EMU, the EMS and the floating exchange rate policies. Various modelling groups address the issues facing Europe and the implications for policy analysis. The objective of the book is to show that the path to monetary union is possible, but that care has to be taken with the design of policies along that path.