Abstract
The eurozone continues to be afflicted by a number of profound imbalances. Enduring weaknesses within the eurozone’s southern ‘periphery’, the euro’s deflationary bias and entrenched patterns of uneven development together threaten to undermine the eurozone as an economic and political unit. Technical ‘fixes’ exist to the eurozone’s imbalances. For example, enhanced fiscal transfer between member states could alleviate some of the dysfunctionalities of the single currency in its current form. But intractable political obstacles render these solutions untenable. As a result, eurozone states remain entrapped in a dysfunctional and unstable currency arrangement. When the ‘coming crisis’ does emerge, the imbalanced eurozone is likely to be front and centre of the global maelstrom.
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Lavery, S. (2018). Enduring Imbalances in the Eurozone. In: Hay, C., Hunt, T. (eds) The Coming Crisis. Building a Sustainable Political Economy: SPERI Research & Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63814-0_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63814-0_10
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