There is no lack of good international economics textbooks ranging from the elementary to the advanced, so that an additional drop in this ocean calls for an explanation. In the present writer's opinion, there seems still to be room for a textbook which can be used in both undergraduate and graduate courses, and which contains a wide range of topics, including those usually omitted from other textbooks. These are the intentions behind the present book, which is an outcrop from undergraduate and graduate courses in international economics that the author has been holding at the University of Rome since 1974, and from his on going research work in this field. Accordingly the work is organized as two-books in-one by distributing the material between text and appendices. The treatment in the body of this book is directed to undergraduate students and is mainly confined to graphic analysis and to some elementary algebra, but it is assumed that the reader will have a good knowledge of basic microeconomics and macroeconomics (so that the usual review material on production functions, indifference curves, standard Keynesian model, etc. , etc. has been omitted) . Each chapter is followed by an appendix in which the treatment is mainly mathematical, and where (i) the topics explained in the text are treated at a level suitable for advanced undergraduate or first-year graduate students and (ii) generalizations and/or topics not treated in the text (including some of those at the frontiers of research) are formally examined.

International economic integration has played a significant part in economic policy decisions for most countries and regions throughout the world over decades. This text looks at why the success of integration schemes has been so variable and what the prospects are for integration in the future.

The enlargement of the European Union towards the East from May 2004 has generated an increase of about 100 million inhabitants in the EU population, and has especially brought along major challenges and important opportunities both for the "new" countries and for the "old" member states. That is the main focus of this volume, which is divided into three sections. The first analyses the effects of the enlargement on the functioning of Community institutions, on the relations with the other Eastern European countries, and finally on regional and global economic dynamics; the second section analyses in detail the role of the monetary politics of the European Central Bank and the activities of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; and the third deals with the importance of the entrepreneurial class in ensuring the success of the transition process of the Eastern European economies.