The Political Economy of International Co-operation

International economic relations over the past few years have led to increasing interdependence between monetary, financial, and trade relations. Monetary disequilibria such as exchange rate misalignments have led to mounting protectionist pressures while attempts at warding them off have induced policy authorities to discharge the burden of adjustment on macroeconomic and monetary policies. The lack of a widely accepted set of rules of the game has increasingly strained the adjustment mechanisms thus adding to the degree of conflict in the international system rendering the search for new forms of cooperation both more difficult and urgently needed. Issue linkage is challenging the roles of international institutions such as the IMF, GATT, or the World Bank – all being established in the context of an international system (Bretton Woods) – whose general rules of the game made it possible to separate money and trade issues while assuring consistent national economic policies. The book examines the problems of international cooperation which have become central in international political economy. lt investigates the economic base of political processes and hence attempts to respond on economic as well as political grounds to the problems posed by international cooperation.

Il volume raccoglie i contributi presentati alla conferenza internazionale "International Cooperation and Interaction between Monetary and Trade Policy" organizzata a Roma il 20-21 marzo 1986 dall'Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) e dal Centro Studi Americani. Pubblicato anche in italiano come L'economia politica della cooperazione internazionale, Milano, Franco Angeli, agosto 1988 (Ricerche di economia applicata ; 21).