In the contemporary world, national economies are undoubtedly much more interdependent than in the past, owing to the presence of active international trade in goods, services, and assets. Hence, in a such interdependent world economy, one cannot analyze the internal macroeconomic policy formation without taking international policy interactions into account..The phenomenon of macroeconomic coordination is indeed a very complex and articulated subject. A central issue of international macroeconomic policy coordination is “how to keep the benefits of extensive international agreements, while at the same time preserving a maximum degree of freedom for each nation to pursue its legitimate economic objectives” (Cooper, 1968). Moreover, one needs to consider that rules and procedures of International Commitments are subject to erosion and reinterpretation, and evolve in response to the interests of the different actors and their bargaining power, sometimes with radical deviations from the original aims. Nevertheless, the issue of macroeconomic interdependence had not been analyzed in a formal, systematic framework until some decades ago. The first seminal work on this issue was “The Economics of Interdependence” by Richard Cooper, published in 1968. Cooper pointed out that increasing interdependence interfere with the successful pursuit of national objectives and suggested the possibility of applying game theoretic apparatuses. This apparatus was used for the first time by Hamada in ‘70s, in the context of the fixed exchange rate regime. In the ‘80s, thanks to the frequent meetings of the major industrialized countries to discuss international financial affairs, the need for international macroeconomic policy coordination attracted considerable attention, notwithstanding it was mainly related to the monetary aspect of the phenomenon. The complexity of international macroeconomic coordination has been usually analyzed by the use of Game Theory. We can say, indeed, that this subject is now one of the most active fields of the application of game theory in international economics. Nowadays, other aspects of the international coordination are becoming increasingly relevant and topical in the international debate: trade, budget, environment, development, welfare etc. These are very delicate issues, both from an economic and a political point of view. The “Millennium Round” of WTO Multilateral Negotiations and the current difficulties to carry on the huge number of issues (ranging from agriculture to FDI regulations, from labor standards to Intellectual Property rights) of the new “Developing Round” after the Doha Meeting (November 2001) and that of Cancun (September 2003) show clearly how important these issues will be in the near future. (......)

Silvia Nenci, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.