Within this context, the international community may also develop “standards” and “codes”, which constitute a form of multilateral rule-making to be implemented on a voluntary basis; and  •  Coordination, ie the agreement between separate policymakers to take and implement joint decisions. As I shall discuss, the Eurosystem is directly involved in most, although not all, of these activities.
The economic rationale for the ECB’s involvement in international cooperation activities rests on the international externalities of domestic policies, ie spillover effects which policies in one economy can produce on other economies via, for instance, interest rates, exchange rates and equity prices. The euro area, however, is a large and relatively closed economy.