Is there a need to coordinate fiscal policy among large industrial countries?

International policy coordination has been one of the fastgrowing research topics in open-economy macroeconomics in the eighties. Recommendations of economic theory towards coordination of macropolicy at a supranational level, taken up as a guideline in the negotiations of the leading economic powers in the annual summit meetings of the Group of Seven, have been mainly based on game theory. Although the theoretical base for these arguments is widely accepted, the resulting policy cooperation scenario has been questioned recently by an increasing number of economists, who regard international coordination as an expensive and even harmful device in stabilization policy. The paper surveys the basic arguments in these international discussion and weighing the pros and cons shares the position of the opponents to a supranational stabilization policy. But at the same time the need for cooperation among souvereign governments is stressed in the fields of international allocation and distribution.