Wealth by Association: Global Prosperity Through Market Unification

European monetary unification has produced a $15 trillion windfall to its member nations that is rarely discussed or accounted for in analyses of economic integration. Edmunds and Marthinsen argue that the reduction in cross-border risks--foreign exchange uncertainty, inflation differentials, competitive devaluations, and protectionism in financial services, among other--is directly responsible for an explosion in the value of fixed income assets and share prices. They explain how this wealth accumulation began to accrue even before the Euro was formally adopted. Could the same thing happen in Latin America or Asia?

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This book demonstrates how and why wealth and growth materialize when financial markets unify by adopting a common currency.

JOHN C. EDMUNDS is Director of the Stephen D. Cutler Investment Management Center at Babson College. He is also on the faculty of the Arthur D. Little School of Management in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.JOHN E. MARTHINSEN is the Distinguished Chair in Swiss Economics of the Glavin Center for Global Entrepreneurial Leadership at Babson College. His main areas of interest are international finance, global macroeconomic analysis, and risk management. The winner of numerous distinguished teaching awards, he also served as Chairman of the Economics Division from 1992 to 1998. He has lived and worked extensively in Switzerland, and he has a wide range of consulting experience working for both domestic and international corporations as well as in the public sector. He is the co-author of Switzerland: A Guide to the Capital and Money Markets (1996) and Entrepreneurship, Productivity, and the Freedom of Information Act (1984).