About the Authors

Professor David Begg
David’s research focuses mainly on monetary policy, exchange rates, monetary union, and economic transition. He is a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a network of leading European economists. He co-authored several of the CEPR annual reports in the series he helped found: Monitoring the European Central Bank, and Monitoring European Integration. The 1997 MEI Report, EMU: getting the endgame right, changed the policy that the European Union adopted to launch the euro 1999. He was also founding Managing Editor of Economic Policy, now an official journal of the European Economic Association.

David has always been interested in applying economic theory to policy design. He spent a year as Economic Policy Adviser at the Bank of England; was commissioned by the IMF to assess the quality of its monetary policy advice in Central and Eastern Europe; and is currently a member of the group of economics professors that meet regularly with Gordon Brown.

David is also committed to management education. He has provided in-house training for the government of Czechoslovakia, the National Bank of Hungary, the Bank of England, and HM Treasury. He has also been Senior Tutor of the Oxford University Business Summer School.

Stanley Fischer
Stanley Fischer is First Deputy Director of the International Monetary Fund.

Rudiger Dornbusch
Rudi Dornbusch, a member of the MIT Economics Department for 27 years, died on July 25, 2002. Rudi played a critical role in defining the modern field of international economics, advising more than 125 doctoral dissertations, and contributed immensely to the Economics community at MIT.