Selected Essays [antikvár]

Foreword Alexandre Lamfalussy was not only an eminent central banker and architect of the euro, but also a brilliant intellectual. This reprint of a careful selection of his essays is a fitting tribute to him as well as a way of preserving the intellectual heritage of this great European. It was a huge pleasure for the National Bank of Belgium to cooperate with the Magyar Nemzeti Bank on this project which brought together the central banks of the two countries which were close to Alexandre Lamfalussy's heart. As Founding President of the European Monetary Insutute, the precursor of the European Central Bank, Alexandre Lamfalussy will always be associated with European Economic and Monetary Union. Lamfalussy was a convinced European and he served Europe in many roles. From his earliest writings, he was an advocate of European monetary integration, but he was always careful to give the economic pillar its right place in Europe's Economic and Monetary Union. Financial stability was a major concern for Lamfalussy and he was often a Cassandra warning of impending financial storms. At the Bank for International Settlements, he made a significant contribution to the creation of a "BIS approach", namely that one should be attentive to imbalances, debt build-ups and bubbles, which may sow the seeds of financial crises. These topics are very much to the fore in the essays in this book. The book further highlights the young Lamfalussy's trenchant analyses of the Belgian economy. While they caused a furore at the time, some of them still ring true today. Lamfalussy showed that Belgian exports suffered from high domestic labour costs and an outdated composition, focused on traditional products. He developed the concept of "defensive investment", which mainly entails the reorganisation of existing factories, with short-term productivity increases, but much less potential for long-run economic growth. Alexandre Lamfalussy's merits were widely recognised, in Belgium too. In 1993, King Baudouin conferred upon him the title of Baron for his efforts at the BIS to save emerging economies from bankruptcy. He was also awarded the honour