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International Collusion or Competition for Macroeconomic Policy Coordination? A Restatement*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2016

Roland Vaubel
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Ever since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods System, there has been a chorus of economists calling for internationally negotiated coordination of macroeconomic policies. Most of them work for international organisations or have developed a special interest in discretionary macro-policy or optimal-control theory.

At the same time, very little centralised coordination has actually taken place. Exchange rate surveillance by the International Monetary Fund does not seem to have played a major role. The economic summit meetings are not used to coordinate macro-policy any longer. Even the first Bonn Summit (1978), the apparent showpiece of centralised coordination, does not seem to have yielded internationally negotiated macroeconomic policy concessions from national governments, but rather enabled their leaders to pursue their domestic objectives against strong internal opposition.

Type
PART ONE: Theoretical Contributions
Information
Recherches Économiques de Louvain/ Louvain Economic Review , Volume 51 , Issue 3-4 , December 1985 , pp. 223 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 1985 

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Footnotes

*

This article draws to some extent on my 1983 essay and replies to its critics.

References

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