Overview of the special issue on Euro area expansion: Current state and future prospects

Introduction

The Department of Economics of the University of Crete began its series of Annual International Conferences on Macroeconomics and International Finance in 1997. The articles included in this special issue are refereed versions of papers presented at the 11th International Conference on Macroeconomic Analysis and International Finance held at the University Campus, Rethymno 24–26 May 2007 in collaboration with JIMF. The central theme of this Conference was Euro area expansion, its current state and future prospects – a topic that has attracted extensive attention both in scholarly circles and among the general public.

The research results reported in this special issue focus on four important policy-oriented topics: EMU enlargement, optimal policy and convergence, the nuts and bolts of Euro adoption, and financial integration and financial markets in new and old EU countries. We open this issue with an overview of these papers.