The Euro Area and the Financial Crisis

Miroslav Beblavy has an unusual blend of academic and political experience. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Brussels think tank, Centre for European Policy Studies and, at the same time, Member of the Slovak Parliament. He is also Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. In the past, he served as a junior minister in his country's government, created an influential think tank and worked for a range of multilateral development institutions as a consultant in Europe, Africa and the Caucasus. David Cobham is Professor of Economics at Heriot-Watt University. He is a specialist in monetary policy who has worked on UK, French and Italian monetary policy, on European monetary integration and on monetary policy and exchange rate regimes in the Middle East and North Africa. He is the editor or co-editor of a number of books on European monetary integration, including The Travails of the Eurozone (2007) and Twenty Years of Inflation Targeting: Lessons Learned and Future Prospects (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Ludovit Odor is an advisor to the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in Slovakia. In the past, he served as a member of the Bank Board at the National Bank of Slovakia and Executive Director responsible for research. He also worked as a Chief Economist at the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic. He played an important role in institutional and structural reforms in Slovakia including the euro adoption in 2009.