European Economic Integration

NOVEMBRE 2018 Chapitre 15. Les Politiques communes ... 127 Chapitre 16. Les avancées européennes depuis les années 1950 dans le domaine scientifique et technologique ... 141 Chapitre 17. L'Age d'or de l'économie européenne (1950-1974) et son déclin ... 147 Chapitre 18. Europe des technocrates ? ... 157 Chapitre 19. Le bloc de l'Est : de l'intégration musclée à la désintégration ... 165 Chapitre 20. Le Sommet de La Haye de décembre 1969. Renouveau de la « classe politique » ... 177 Chapitre 21. Achèvement du Marché commun ... 193 Chapitre 22. Approfondissement : l'Europe monétaire ... 203 Chapitre 23. Élargissements et ancrage démocratique ... 219 Chapitre 24. Morceaux d'Europe : Les territoires à statuts spéciaux dans l'Union européenne ... 239 Chapitre 25. Au-delà du Continent européen : le Fonds européen de développement ... 247 Chapitre 26. L'Europe face à une « polycrise » (2007-2018) ... 255 Conclusion ... 263 Brève orientation bibliographique ... 264 11 ALLOCUTION DE PAUL-HENRI SPAAK (4 SEPTEMBRE 1954) Le 4 septembre 1954, Paul-Henri Spaak, ministre belge des Affaires étrangères, dresse le bilan des dix premières années d'existence de l'union douanière entre la Belgique, le Luxembourg et les Pays-Bas.

Though the real exchange rate is a key price for most economies, our understanding of its determinants is still incomplete. This paper studies the implications of status competition in the marriage market for the real exchange rate. In theory, a rise in the sex ratio (increasing relative surplus of men) can generate a decline in the real exchange rate (RER) through both a savings channel and an effective labor supply channel. The effects can be quantitatively large if the biological desire for a marriage partner is strong. Empirically, we show that within China, those regions with a faster increase in the sex ratio also exhibit a faster decline in the RER (the relative price of nontradables). Furthermore, across countries, those with a high sex ratio tend to have a low real exchange rate, beyond what can be explained by the Balassa-Samuelson effect, financial underdevelopment, dependence ratio, and exchange rate regime classifications. As an application, the estimation suggests that these structural factors can account for the Chinese exchange rate almost completely.

The experience rated unemployment insurance system in the United States results in some firms paying more or less than their share of generated UI claims largely because of upper and lower bounds on the maximum UI payroll tax rate. Firms that pay less are thus receiving a subsidy relative to their peers. Per unit of paid UI benefit to the separated worker, the cost paid by the firm is called the marginal tax cost of separation, MTC, where firms with an MTC below one are receiving such a subsidy. This paper provides new empirical evidence that the MTC matters for the composition of quits versus layoffs. Unlike the existing literature, this paper calculates a time-varying forward looking measure of the marginal tax cost as opposed to the widely used steady-state MTC. This measure is both consistent with the firm’s optimization problem and incorporates a firm’s expectations about the future. This paper shows that an increase of 10% in the marginal tax cost generates an increase of 17% ...

Wireless Sensors Networks are widely used to monitor the areas. In many WSN applications it is important to achieve a good coverage of the observed area while the energetic efficiency and the lifetime of the network are high. The task of placing the sensor nodes while addressing these objectives is known as WSN layout problem. As the optimal sensors network layout can be reformulated as a multiobjective optimization problem, the paper presents a possible use of GHEA technique for solving the considered problem.

I. INTRODUCTION IRELESS Sensor Network is a network consisting of a high number of sensors deployed over a specific area, wirelessly communicating data to a central system. There are many applications based on wireless sensor networks for environmental monitoring: ...

Wage subsidies can be provided directly to the worker, or indirectly by subsidizing the employer; with reduced cost of labor, employers offer higher wages. The standard literature stipulates that this statutory incidence bears no implications for the economic incidence. We propose and test a mechanism by which indirect subsidies lead to higher social welfare. Studies show that workers reciprocate higher wages with higher effort. Indirect subsidies are shifted to the workers as higher wages, leading workers to reciprocate with higher effort and productivity. A controlled laboratory experiment supports our behavioral hypotheses and confirms the behavioral and welfare implications.

ABSTRACT- In this paper we propose Genetic Algorithm for reducing connected dominating set in Wireless Adhoc networks. Virtual backbone will be formed to count connected dominating set. It shows that the connected dominating size is reduced in our virtual backbone. It solves the problem of flooding. We use concept of Unit Disk Graph from graph theory to solve our example. We finally prove that the Minimum Connected Dominating Set (MCDS) is NP-Complete. Our approach for solving this problem by considering weight for the vertices. Keywords: Genetic Algorithm, Connected Dominating Set (CDS)

We analyze a static competitive search model where risk-averse individuals with different wealth levels trade an indivisible good. The real estate market is a particularly relevant application. We show that the equilibrium is constrained efficient. Other properties of the equilibrium are derived, including the generalized version of the Hosios (1990) rule for this environment. Under risk aversion, buyers and sellers evaluate the trade-off between prices and trading probabilities differently as their wealth increases. As they become richer, buyers are relatively less concerned about paying higher prices and more concerned about increasing their trading probability. Conversely, richer sellers care less about increasing the probability of a sale than poorer sellers, and they care more about trading at a higher price. This results in positive sorting in equilibrium, that is, wealthier (poorer) buyers and sellers trading with each other. As transactions among wealthier agents involve higher prices, the equilibrium features frictional price dispersion. By contrast, with transferable utility, all individuals would trade at the same price, irrespectively of their wealth.

The paper investigates the effects on welfare of price discrimination when a multimarket seller faces competition in one of its two markets. With respect to uniform pricing, price discrimination changes competition in such a way, that even with linear demands, price discrimination can be welfareimproving, both under strategic substitutes and strategic complements.

Whether sectoral diversification affects the exchange rate regime choice and the mechanisms through which this effect might work are largely unknown. This study identifies two mechanisms through which sectoral diversification and exchange rate regime choice may be related, namely the external shock absorption and rent-seeking mechanisms. A direct effect of diversification on regime choice is also hypothesized. Using a panel dataset covering 91 countries over the period 1985-2006, the paper runs a 'horse race' among these potential channels. The results show that diversification is associated with flexible regimes in countries experiencing greater external shocks. Additionally, countries characterized by higher levels of corruption and lower levels of diversification opt for fixed regimes, suggesting that a fixed regime may shield the powerful elites from international competition. There is also weak evidence of the direct effect of diversification in adopting flexible regimes.

The aim of this paper is to present a cross-sectional analysis of the Transmission Protection Instrument (TPI) of the European Central Bank. In this regard, after having deepened the technical features of this mechanism, we carry out an assessment of the economic reasons behind the launch of the TPI and, then, we study the legal issues that emerge from this tool. In particular, we propose a comparison with the ruling of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) about the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs) in order to evaluate the compliance of this new instrument with the provisions of the European Treaties. Titolo: Un'analisi trasversale dello Strumento di protezione della trasmissione: tra esigenze economiche e trattati obsoleti Abstract [It]: La finalità del presente scritto è quella di offrire un'analisi trasversale del Transmission Protection Instrument (TPI) della Banca Centrale Europea. In tal senso, nell'articolo de quo, dopo aver approfondito le caratteristiche di questo nuovo strumento, si propone una riflessione relativa alle esigenze economiche che hanno portato alla creazione del TPI, per poi focalizzare l'attenzione sulle questioni giuridiche derivanti dalla nascita di questo nuovo meccanismo. A tal proposito, in particolare, si avanza un parallelo con la sentenza della Corte di Giustizia dell'Unione Europea in merito alle Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs) al fine di valutare la legittimità del suddetto strumento rispetto a quanto previsto dai Trattati euro-unitari.

que des subventions et mandats obtenus par ses équipes de recherche. CIRANO is a private non-profit organization incorporated under the Québec Companies Act. Its infrastructure and research activities are funded through fees paid by member organizations, an infrastructure grant from the

The question of whether Britain should take part in European monetary union (EMU) has been splitting political parties for more than 150 years.  The present debate, sparked by the 1991 'Maastricht Treaty' which set out the timetabled  blueprint for the euro, has been highly politicised to the detriment of rational economic analysis.  Commentators in Britain have also failed to understand the changing context of the debate.  In mid-1998, it is now clear that EMU will begin on January 1, 1999 with eleven of the fifteen member states participating.  The question is no longer 'should Britain join a future EMU?', but rather 'can Britain afford to remain outside a euro-bloc of all the major EU states?'.  This article examines the changing case for and against membership of EMU.  It begins with a brief review of the benefits and costs of membership, before considering the way that the balance has been affected by the European Council's decision to begin with an EMU of the 'Euro-11' in January 1999.

Widely debated concept, at least in the last three decades, sustainable development remains an important objective of mankind, even in the third millennium. Objectives of sustainable development, in our country, are contained in several categories, which are grouped into „critical challenges” and „inter and trans-sectoral issues”. „Critical challenges”, according to this approach, are the „protect the environment” and „protection of

This article examines the debate surrounding EMU. It briefly reviews the benefits of EMU in terms of ending exchange rate uncertainty and eliminating transactions costs within the EC and explores in more detail the potential costs to member states of sacrificing 'monetary sovereignty' (ie, giving up the ability to make independent monetary policy and alter exchange rates). Finally, it discusses the likelihood of reaching the objective of an 'EMU of the Twelve' in the light of recent events and examines the likelihood of a 'mini-EMU' or 'Hard EMS' emerging instead.

Bogdan Voicu, Mălina Voicu, Cristina Băjenaru, Claudia Petrescu, Ioan Mărginean (coord.). 2004. Șpaga la români. Ce spun și ce cred românii despre corupția mică [Bribing in Romania: What say and what believe Romanians about petty corruption], Bucharest : ICCV & CONCEPT.

We develop and test a structural asymmetric information transaction model to char acterize the price impact of information when markets are thin. Since orders are accepted individually, the model allows for transaction costs and brokerage fees. Equilibrium de mands mixed entry strategies on the part of potentially-informed traders. Estimation of the structural parameters is performed using a maximum likelihood procedure on NYSE data. The price impact of information is found to be positive and significant, but eco nomically small. This is because while the amount of private information is substantial, the quality of the information signals is quite poor. Insiders do not trade small quantities, which suggests that their ability to divide orders is limited by transaction costs.

The main goal of this research is to give the complete conception about numerical integration including
Newton-Cotes formulas and aimed at comparing the rate of performance or the rate of accuracy of
Trapezoidal, Simpson’s 1/3, and Simpson’s 3/8. To verify the accuracy, we compare each rules
demonstrating the smallest error values among them. The software package MATLAB R2013a is applied to
determine the best method, as well as the results, are compared. It includes graphical comparisons
mentioning these methods graphically. After all, it is then emphasized that the among methods considered,
Simpson’s 1/3 is more effective and accurate when the condition of the subdivision is only even for solving
a definite integral.

Donors cannot pre-commit to support scaled-up public spending programs on a continuing basis, nor can governments credibly commit to curtail expenditure rapidly in the event that aid revenues contract. An aid boom may therefore be accompanied by a credibility problem. When this is the case, the absorb and spend strategy recommended by the IMF leads to capital flight, higher inflation, and large currenct account surpluses inclusive of aid. The right policy package combines a critical minimum degree of fiscal restraint with reverse sterilization.

This paper presents an empirical investigation of the spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) using a firm-level panel data from Thailand between 2001 and 2004. We examine export spillovers, both intra-and inter-industry. The evidence shows that FDI inflows into Thailand generate some positive externalities to domestic firms. Foreign firms generate positive export spillovers to their domestic customers on the decision to participate in export markets. Once domestic firms enter export markets, the competitive effect generated by foreign firms in the same industry forces them to improve their export intensity. Although our findings confirm that overall FDI generates benefits to domestic firms, different incentives to FDI generate different spillovers to different types of domestic firms. These results may be used as guidance for policymakers to attract certain types of FDI inflows. One implication is that government may wish to encourage export-oriented FDI as it generates positive export spillovers to domestic firms whilst protecting domestic firms in some industries that are affected by the negative export spillovers from domestic market-oriented FDI.

SAMPOGNARO et Sandro SHELEGIA pour leurs suggestions ainsi que les participants aux séminaires de Banca d'Italia, Insee, Institute for Advanced Studies, WIIW et des conférences 2009 CEPR-ERWIT, 2009 SED meeting, 2009 ESEM et 2009 ETSG annual meeting pour leurs commentaires. Toutes les erreurs restantes sont les nôtres. Les opinions exprimées ici sont celles des auteurs et ne représentent en aucun cas celles de leurs institutions respectives.

his chapter critically examines the European Union’s decades-long effort to harmonise insolvency law across its Member States. While harmonisation is often seen as essential for reducing legal uncertainty, supporting cross-border investment, and ensuring fair creditor treatment, progress has been uneven and politically fraught. The chapter charts the evolution of EU insolvency instruments, from the European Insolvency Regulation to the 2019 Directive on Preventive Restructuring and the 2022 Proposal for further harmonisation, highlighting achievements as well as persistent obstacles. Drawing on legal theory, policy analysis, and empirical insights, it identifies key challenges to deeper integration, including legal path dependence, national diversity, and political resistance. The chapter argues that sustainable harmonisation requires an adaptive approach rooted in incrementalism, regulatory flexibility, and participatory governance. It advocates for partial harmonisation that embraces legal diversity and fosters regulatory competition as a driver of innovation. Crucially, the paper calls for greater attention to the needs of MSMEs, which are underserved by current frameworks. By balancing unity with national specificity, the EU can pursue a harmonisation strategy that is politically feasible, legally effective, and economically inclusive.

This paper argues that despite two decades of reform, the European Union's (EU) insolvency framework remains structurally and behaviourally inaccessible to micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). While policy rhetoric has embraced the idea of a "rescue culture," practical implementation has prioritised larger, well-resourced firms. Drawing on international guidance and case studies from Ireland, France, and the United States (US), the paper shows that legal reform alone is insufficient. Structural complexity, cultural stigma, and weak institutional outreach continue to block MSME access to rescue. The paper proposes a forward-looking agenda for EU reform centred on three pillars: legal simplification tailored to MSMEs; institutional scaffolding to enhance visibility and support; and cultural reframing to normalise restructuring as a second chance. It concludes that a functioning rescue culture must treat MSMEs not as scaled-down versions of large firms, but as distinct users with unique constraints and capacities.

In this paper, we present a dynamic model which explains output, enployment and energy consumption in the French manufacturing sector in terms of the expected and actual path of wage rates and energy prices in units of output. The model has two distinguishing features: First, the rate of capacity utilization is determined explicitly from profit-maximizing behavior and it is viewed as the crucial adjusting variable in the short run. Second, we assume complete lack of substitutability between capital, labor and energy inputs ex post. The model is motivated by a brief discussion of French growth, focusing on the decline of profitability and employment in manufacturing, and simulated using annual data from 1950 to 1979. The wage explosion and the energy shock of the early seventies are interpreted (in a model allowing for overhead labor) in terms of changes in expected real factor prices,and their effects on the utilization and the profitability of each vintage are quantified. Aggregating over vintages, the model generates the observed decline in profitability and utilization of existing capacity. The results of the simulation are very encouraging, and a simultaneous estimation of the model under static expectations is rejected by the data. There are two limitations of the analysis which will be relaxed in further work. Investment is exogenous and open-economy aspects only appear indirectly, say via constraints on the energy price and the price of output.

This paper provides new evidence on international productivity gaps; this evidence is obtained from largescale firm-level data from the French and Japanese manufacturing industries using non-parametric methodologies designed to overcome confidentiality restrictions. Our primary finding is that international productivity gaps are sensitive to the export status of firms. We also show that productivity differences between French and Japanese exporters vary across export destinations. We propose a simple analytical framework to relate those basic findings to the new models of international trade with heterogeneous firms. Under this framework, interna-tional firm-level productivity comparisons provide new insights into the importance of trade-related institutional and policy differences across countries. 9 Following and , our empirical analysis relies on the concept of first-order stochastic dominance. Establishing stochastic dominance means that one cumulative distribution lies to the right of another. Therefore, these tests go beyond the tests for differences in average productivity that are typically found in the international productivity gap literature. 10 Section 6 will discuss this issue in more detail. 11 The simple prediction that exporters outperform non-exporters has received strong empirical support in a large variety of countries. See Greenaway and Kneller (2007), Wagner (2007), Wagner (2012) for a survey, and Bellone et al. (2008) and for evidence from France and Japan, respectively. However, from this literature, there is no clear answer on whether it is the self-selection mechanism or the learning-by-exporting mechanism that primarily drives the productivity gap across exporters and non-exporters. This may depend on the type of countries (developing versus developed), the type of industries (technology intensive or not) or the type of firms (young versus mature).

The sterling' crisis' of recent months has seen the pound slump against the deutschmark, before spectacularly crashing through the floor of its trading band in the exchange rate mechanism (ERM) on 16 September 1992.  By 2 October, sterling had dropped to a low of DM2.43. While the speculative pressure which finally forced sterling to withdraw from the ERM was triggered by special factors – notably the foreign exchange market's fear that a 'No' vote in the French referendum on September 20 would result in a general realignment of the ERM currencies – the ‘economic fundamentals' had been pointing towards a substantial devaluation of sterling for many months. This article examines the causes of the recent pressure on sterling, highlighting the roles played by the increasing overvaluation of the exchange rate and the shrinking UK-German interest rate differential.

On January 1, 2002, the new European single currency, the euro, was introduced to 300 million citizens across twelve European Union member states.  While the euro was technically born on January 1, 1999, when the participating member states locked the value of their currencies against the euro, thereby making francs, euros and deutschmarks interchangeable without fear of exchange rate risk, it was a 'virtual' currency for its first three years, existing only as a unit of account for paper transactions. Its birth as a physical currency, and the removal of so-called 'legacy' currencies from circulation, is a massive psychological change and, for most citizens, makes the euro 'real' for the first time.  This chapter does not revisit the theoretical debate over European monetary union, but rather examines the performance of the eurozone since the locking of currencies in 1999 and the British government's current policy towards membership.

1 July 1990 witnessed a major landmark in European history. Forty years after Germany's traumatic division into East and West, a far-reaching treaty on economic and monetary union has reunited the country in all but name.  Barriers to the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour between the two Germanys were formally lifted and the Deutschmark replaced the Ostmark as legal tender in the East. In the few hectic months since the Berlin Wall was breached, the two Germanys have thus overtaken the European Community (EC) in its long march to economic and monetary union. This article discussed the mounting political pressure that has forced East and West Germany to fuse their economies in a time-scale most commentators thought impossible.

On 1 January 1999, a decade of theorising about the likely economic costs and benefits of a single currency came to end with the official launch of the euro. The strides made in reducing inflation and budget deficits by the 11 participating states, the design of the European Central Bank - which is closely modelled on the Bundesbank - and the appointment of a hawkish Dutch president, Wim Duisenberg, all suggested that the euro would be a
worthy successor to the deutschmark as Europe's hegemonic currency.  Many commentators anticipated an early appreciation in the value of the euro vis a vis the US dollar, as central banks around the world reduced their official holdings of dollars in favour of the new European currency. In fact, the euro depreciated almost 15 per cent against the US dollar over the period between its launch in January and July 1999. Critics of monetary union have interpreted this decline as evidence of fundamental flaws in its institutional design, which are now manifesting themselves in the weakness of the currency. This article explores the reasons for the euro' s depreciation and examines the implications for Britain.

This paper presents an analysis of environmental policy in imperfectly competitive market with private information. We examine how environmental taxes should be optimally levied when the regulator faces asymmetric information about production and abatement costs in an irreversible observable policy commitment game. Under our setting, the paper investigates how information disclosure can improve the e¢ciency of the tax setting process and may o¤er an e¢ cient complement to conventional regulatory approaches. From a policy perspective, our …ndings suggest that access to publicly disclosed information improves the ability of the regulator to levy …rms' speci…c environmental taxes. Despite its advantages, however, informational disclosure may harm the environmental policy it purports to enhance since it facilitates collusive behavior. We show that information sharing may occur and thus leads to a superior outcome in terms of industry output and emissions. Disclosure may undermine market performance and environmental policy.

This paper presents an analysis of environmental policy in imperfectly competitive market with private information. We examine how environmental taxes should be optimally levied when the regulator faces asymmetric information about production and abatement costs in an irreversible observable policy commitment game. Under our setting, the paper investigates how information disclosure can improve the e¢ciency of the tax setting process and may o¤er an e¢ cient complement to conventional regulatory approaches. From a policy perspective, our …ndings suggest that access to publicly disclosed information improves the ability of the regulator to levy …rms' speci…c environmental taxes. Despite its advantages, however, informational disclosure may harm the environmental policy it purports to enhance since it facilitates collusive behavior. We show that information sharing may occur and thus leads to a superior outcome in terms of industry output and emissions. Disclosure may undermine market performance and environmental policy.

Over thirty years after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty (1992), which inaugurated the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the underlying tensions between monetary power – exercised with full independence by the European Central Bank (ECB) – and the democratic principle, particularly in its representative dimension, remain unresolved. This paper seeks to demonstrate how these tensions originate from the “constitutionalization” of money, that is, the regulation of monetary policy through the European Treaties, the Union’s constitutional-level source of law. This process of “constitutionalization” leads, in practice, to the depoliticization of liquidity management, not by rendering it neutral, as monetary decisions are inherently political,
but by significantly distancing it from the democratic process of representative institutions. Building on this interpretive framework, the paper argues that the most plausible – albeit ambitious – path toward reconciling monetary policy with the democratic principle lies in a process of “de-constitutionalization” of money.

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms * The paper draws on both Chapman (Igg6a) and Chapman and Smith (I995). The author wishes to thank Tony Salvage, Stephanie Hancock, Damian Smith, and an anonymous referee. Nicholas Barr and David Stager have been inspirational in this area of economic policy. None of the above necessarily agrees with what follows. 1 Following the recommendation of the committee set up to consider financing options for higher education, chaired by Neville Wran. See Financing Higher Education, Australian Government Printing Service, I988. Bruce Chapman was a consultant to the Committee.

In the paper, the author illustrates the reason why the centre-right government majority is unfavourably opposed to Itali's ratification of the reform of the European Stability Mechanism. Furthermore, the history of the Mechanism is outlined and what the proposed reform of the same envisages, carrying out a critique of the reform itself, but the author believes that an open discussion is necessary on what the Mechanism represents of the future of Europe

We analyze the relation between exchange-rate volatility and the volume of international trade, in a general-equilibrium stochastic-endowment economy with imperfect international commodity markets, and treating both variables as endogenous. Even in the simplest model, the sign of the relation depends on the source for the change in volatility. For instance, more volatility of the endowments and higher costs to international trade both boost exchange risk (and lower welfare); but the ÿrst increases the expected volume of trade, while the second decreases trade. Note that even the (inter-equilibria) relation between trade and welfare is ambiguous.

In December 1991, the member states of the European Community (EC) took the historic step of pledging themselves to the creation of European monetary union (EMU) before the end of the century.  This chapter examines the debate surrounding EMU. It briefly reviews the benefits of EMU in terms of ending exchange rate uncertainty and eliminating transactions costs within the EC and explores in more detail the potential costs to member states of sacrificing 'monetary sovereignty' (i.e. giving up the ability to make independent monetary policy and alter exchange rates). It then considers the importance of the constitutional relationship between governments and central banks for successful monetary policy and assesses the implications for the design of the ECB. Finally, it provides an overview of the Maastricht Treaty and discusses the likelihood of reaching the objective of an 'EMU of the Twelve' in the light of recent events.

This article discusses the implications of membership of the European Monetary System for Britain, following the entry of sterling into the system in October 1990.  In the short term (the 'honeymoon period'), there will be a temporary relaxation in demand management policy, but a severe squeeze on companies vulnerable to overseas competition. In the medium term,
the recession necessary to curb inflation will be generalised to the whole economy as the Government is forced to deflate demand more aggressively. And in the long term, Britain can look forward to an era of lower inflation and interest rates and far greater exchange rate stability.  These long term benefits are worth striving for, but they will not be achieved costlessly.

Thanks to an expensive television advertising campaign financed by the 'Department for Enterprise', the European Community's '1992' initiative has finally penetrated Britain's collective consciousness, nearly four years after the programme first began rolling. 'Europe's open for business!', the catchy slogan used in the campaign, has become the clarion call of British business, which has at last been stirred into action by the prospect of unbridled, cross-border competition in post-1992 Europe.  However, while the Government has successfully alerted industry and commerce to the coming of the 'single market' in 1992, the means by which the Community intends to achieve this goal is less well understood. The situation is not clarified by the frequently inconsistent statements emanating from, on the one hand, the British Government, and on the other, the Community itself. The former clearly see in 1992 'the vision of a deregulated, free market, open Europe ... driven by consumer choice', while the latter envisage it as a process of economic and political integration, in which power is increasingly transferred to Brussels.  In this vein, its chief spokesman on 1992, Mr. Jacques Delors, recently forecast that within a decade '80% of economic, and perhaps social and tax, legislation will be of Community origin' . In an attempt to clear the waters, this article offers an overview of 1992 against the economic and political background of the initiative. It argues that while the ultimate goal of a Europe sans frontieres may never be achieved, the advances made in the present drive for greater unity are to be welcomed.

We provide analytic solutions for any asymmetric …rst-price auction, both with and without a minimum bid m, for two buyers having valuations uniformly distributed on [v 1 ; v 1 ] and [v 2 ; v 2 ]. We show that our solutions are consistent with the previously known subcases studied by Griesmer et al. (1967), when v 1 = v 2 ; and Vickrey (1961), when one valuation is commonly known. We also show that the solution is continuous in v 1 ; v 1 ; v 2 ; v 2 and m. Several interesting examples are presented, including a class where the two bid functions are linear. 1 "It resists solution by analytical methods," Vickrey (1961). 2 For presentation purposes, we normalize the …rst bidder's distribution to be on [0,1]. 3 This result was later used by Maskin and Riley (2000), and Cantillon (2002). Plum (1992) extends this analytic result to cover the power distribution F 1 (x) = x and F 2 (x) = x : Also, more recently Cheng (2006) adds the case of F 1 (x) = x and F 2 (x) = x under the restriction that = ( +1) ( +1) . Note that these again have the same lower bound for the support of the two distributions.

The European Community (EC) is on the brink of realising a 35 year-old dream.  In March 1957, its founding fathers signed the 'Treaty of Rome', pledging their countries to eliminate all barriers to the cross-border movement of goods, services, labour and capital. By December 31 this year, the EC's ambitious' 1992' programme aims to have swept away the remaining obstacles to the creation of the so-called 'single market'.  For the first time, the EC will be a truly integrated economy, with the world's largest market of 343m consumers and a gross domestic product (GDP) of US$6tr. This chapter examines the background to the '1992' programme, examining the reasons for its introduction, reviewing its main features and analysing the likely economic implications for the EC's twelve member states.

The Treaty on European Union signed at Maastricht in December 1991 committed the European Union (EU) to establishing a single currency. Despite the subsequent tensions within the European Monetary System (EMS), which culminated in the withdrawal of sterling and the Italian lira, the imposition of emergency capital controls in several countries and an increase in the margins of fluctuation within the exchange rate mechanism to + 15 per cent, the Maastrioht Treaty was successfully ratified and came into effect in November 1993. For many of the member states (although not Britain), commitment to the goal of a single currency remains strong. This article reviews the prospects for achieving European Monetary Union (EMU) after the travails of the last three years.

Full monetary union has long been an objective of the European Community (EC). As early as 1971 member states expressed 'their political will to establish a monetary union', endorsing an ambitious plan to create a single EC currency within ten years. The same sentiments inspired the establishment of the European Monetary System in 1979.  And as the '1992' programme gathers pace, thereby accelerating the process of economic integration, the EC has launched yet another drive for monetary union with the adoption of the controversial 'Delors Report' at the Madrid Summit in June 1989.

This article examines the nature of European monetary union and documents the EC's prolonged struggle to achieve closer monetary integration between member states, asking whether, in the light of the British Government's well-known hostility to the Delors Report's proposals, this latest initiative represents yet another false start.