Publisher's Synopsis
Financial capital can cross the globe at almost unlimited speed, multinational firms can threaten to relocate their business, consumers can shop cross-border and labour can cross borders. These economic developments as well as legal and political harmonization efforts put pressure on national economic policy making. Will national policies have to adjust to the primacy of internationalization? Will they become more similar across nations and will they produce similar outcomes? This book analyzes twelve different policy fields. Stabilization policies such as monetary and fiscal policy, industrial and migration policy, distribution policies such as tax and welfare policies and policies concerning health and safety and the environment. All papers conclude that mechanisms forcing policies to converge work parallel with mechanisms of divergence. Asymmetries of power between countries, problems of collective action, states looking for niches rather than competing through lower standards, political ideology, etc. seem to be quite crucial for economic policy making. While economic, legal and political pressures work in favour of convergence, history and institutions work in the opposite direction. The book mainly concentrates on European economic policy making and sees ?social dumping?, a ?race to the bottom? as unlikely outcomes due to institutional counterforces. European economic policy diversity seems the most likely outcome for many of the analyzed policy fields.
