The Macroeconomics of Global Imbalances: European and Asian Perspectives

This book is the result of a workshop on the effects of globalization on Asian and European countries, organized by Marc Uzan and the Austrian Ministry of Finance in April 2006. Bringing together key academics, policy makers and private market participants, these chapters cover the current debate of global imbalances and the way to resolve the disequilibrium in the international monetary system and understand the need for international cooperation among the different monetary areas of the world.

Various important points come out of the book; firstly there is an emphasis on the difficulties for Europeans and Asians to find common positions vis-a-vis global imbalances due to different exchange rate regimes throughout Asia preventing similar responses. The role of the US dollar as a world currency is also discussed, as well as EU regional monetary cooperation and an analysis of the Euro. The implementation of economic policy to redress global imbalances is also considered, as is the emergence of China on the world stage and its industrial development projects. These questions and the way the international financial community will resolve them, will have a huge impact in the functioning of the international monetary system. The current unwinding of the global imbalances that we are facing with the global market disruptions since August 2007, demonstrate that a new geography of international finance is emerging between Europe and Asia. The book addresses also the way that a dialog in the field in monetary arena needs to be structured between Europe and Asia.

Marc Uzan is Executive Director and founder of the Reinventing Bretton Woods committee, a think tank focusing on the international financial architecture issues through a regular dialog between markets and governments. He is the author of Financial System Under Stress (1996) and co-editor with Dominic Wilson of the book Private Capital Flows (2000) also published by Routledge.