Crisis in the European Monetary Union: A Core-Periphery Perspective

Abstract

“Crisis in the European Monetary Union: A Core-Periphery Perspective” explains what lies behind the decision of a set of politically, economically and socially heterogeneous countries, having in common a loose geographical proximity, to engage in a process of monetary integration, consisting of fully liberalizing goods and capital movements, establishing supranational authorities in charge of ensuring undistorted competition in a supposedly levelled playing field, and abandoning fiscal, monetary and exchange-rate sovereignty. This process of European-wide globalization reshaped the structural core-peripheries trade and industrial relationships. We assist today to the emergence of a polarized Europe, characterized by an industrial and industrialising core, a less industrialized and de-industrializing south periphery and a rapidly catching-up eastern periphery.