A critical examination of the EMU from different perspectives. It includes essays on the political economy of currency unions, on the Growth and Stability pact, the European Central Bank, an evaluation of the first four years of the EMU, and the costs and benefits for Sweden as well as for Britain of adopting the euro.

One theme of this volume is whether the complementarity between technology and human capital is a recent phenomenon, or whether it can be traced through history. Different approaches to human capital as well as technology are applied, and besides historical surveys are total factor productivity and patent data employed. The studies deal with the Iberian peninsula, Scandinavia, and Canada, countries displaying different patterns in the international development.