This distinctive textbook combines comprehensive coverage of the key policy areas
of the European Union with analysis of individual countries, including the recent
accession countries and Turkey. Part I analyzes the economic bases for the rise of
the European Union from its origins in the post-WorldWar II recovery to its historic
enlargement in 2004. Part II takes up the different nation state perspectives on the EU’s
economic policies by looking in turn at all European countries, whether members of
the EU or not. The book is unique in providing both an EU perspective and European
nation-state perspective on the major policy issues which have arisen since the end
of World War II, as well as putting the economic analysis into a historical narrative
which emphasizes the responses of policy-makers to external shocks such as the Cold
War, oil shocks, German reunification, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Larry Neal is a Research Associate at NBER and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was Founding Director of the
European Union Centre.