The lesson of the sovereign debt crises of the 2010s, and of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is that EMU irreversibility, if not to remain a wishful statement in the founding treaties, necessitates to be completed by carefully designed ramparts for extraordinary times beside regulations...

In the revised monetary policy strategy of the European Central Bank (ECB), "price stability is best maintained by aiming for two per cent inflation over the medium term", with "symmetric commitment" to this target. "Symmetry means that the Governing Council considers negative and positive...

Objectives: Is the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) truly ‘irreversible’ as stated in the treaties? (i) From the sovereign debt crises of the 2010s, and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we draw the lesson that when exposed to large, systemic shocks the EMU faces a trilemma among...

The euro area crisis shows some similarities with the crisis that affected the European Monetary System in 1992-93. I argue that the theoretical framework to be used in order to analyze it can also be similar. As a matter of fact, together with the point of view of the government, that should...

The predictions made by economists of the value of the euro prior to its introduction were essentially based on the expected portfolio adjustment resulting from the role that it might play as an international currency. As a result, most analysts agreed that the euro would be a strong currency,...

In this paper we extend Nordhaus’ (1994) results to an environment which may represent the current European situation, characterised by a single monetary authority and several fiscal bodies. We show that: a) co-operation among national fiscal authorities is welfare improving only if they also...

In the revised monetary policy strategy of the European Central Bank (ECB), “price stability is best maintained by aiming for two per cent inflation over the medium term”, with “symmetric commitment” to this target. “Symmetry means that the Governing Council considers negative and...