Resumen
It is well known that the euro was designed to facilitate closer European capital market integration alongside closer European trade and production integration. What is less well known is that by the time of the euro’s launch in 1999 an enlarged Eurozone capital market had a two-fold purpose: where prior to the Asian crisis of 1997 its chief purpose was to promote the efficiency with which it served the financing needs of corporations, after that crisis its additional purpose was to promote the effectiveness with which it could give protection against global financial pressures and against the gravitational pull of the dollar in particular and, in so doing, give Eurozone policy makers greater autonomy over the conduct of monetary policy The upshot of this argument is that the relation between the economics and the politics of the euro is different to that as usually construed. The euros’ creators did not first look to their political objectives before deciding on how they could use currency integration as a tool to promote these objectives. Rather, it was the other way round: they first looked at the new global financial realities before deciding on how they could best realize their political objectives in the context of these realities.
Acerca del expositor
Professor Photis Lysandrou is a Honorary Research Fellow at the City Political Economy Research Centre. He has taught at City and Greenwich University and was Lead Professor in Economics at London Metropolitan University. His research interests are in the areas of history of economic thought, economic methodology, globalization and global finance and corporate governance. He has published numerous articles in leading economic and social science journals.