Disputing over international economic policy coordination: The ‘first generation' of models

Abstract

Although international economic coordination was one of the major questions arising in international economics after World War I, when the British hegemonic stability broke down, it mainly attracted the interest of economists from the 1960s onwards, as economic interdependence revealed itself to be a significant phenomenon, with an expansion of research during a period that began in the mid-1970s and ended in the late 1980s. During those fifteen years, a major theoretical effort yielded a significant body of literature which may be analyzed as an outcome, independently of its practical application. In fact, international economic policy coordination remained a speculative matter which, it seems, did not adequately support or persuade policy-makers to implement concrete economic coordination among countries. Far from explaining why this happened, a detailed investigation of the assumptions and logical aspects on which theories were grounded may provide insights into their practical workability.