Money Markets and Politics : Edward Elgar Publishing : 9781843764458 : 1843764458 : 19 Dec 2003 : The dramatic evolution of financial markets in the 1980s and 1990s, accompanied by increasing institutional integration between nations (most notably in the EU), have fostered a widespread belief that governments - particularly those of small economies - have essentially lost the power to pursue sovereign, independent economic policies. At the same time, it is widely assumed that the loss of monetary-policy control is a major opportunity cost for a country adopting a rigid exchange-rate regime or, in the European context, for countries joining the EMU. This book sheds light on these arguments by examining the relationship between the international integration of domestic money markets and the degree of monetary-policy independence in eleven small, open economies in Europe. The authors address these important issues in the context of a broad-based historical analysis of market formation an