This paper focuses on the non linear adjustment of import prices in national currency to shocks in exchange rates and foreign prices measured in the exporters' currency of products originating outside the euro area and imported into European Union countries (EU 15). The paper looks at three...

This paper studies the pass-through of exchange rate changes into the prices of imports that originated inside the euro area made by some New Member States (NMSs) of the European Union and one candidate country (Turkey). I use data on import unit values for nine different product categories and...

This paper develops the "identified VAR" models of France and Spain with German monetary variables to identify monetary policy shocks during the period when the exchange rate is controlled mostly by the ERM. Different identifying assumptions on the contemporaneous policy interactions are...

This paper studies the effects of delegating control of sovereign debt issuance to an independent authority in a monetary union where public spending decisions are decentralized. The model assumes that no policy makers are capable of commitment to a rule. However, consistent with Rogoff (1985)...

This paper studies the implications of cross-country housing market heterogeneity for a monetary union, also comparing the results with a flexible exchange rate and independent monetary policy setting. I develop a two-country new Keynesian general equilibrium model with housing and collateral...

The ECB has still not decided which monetary policy strategy to pursue from 1999. However, the preparatory work has reduced the possible alternatives to two: a strategy of intermediate objectives fixed in terms of the quantity of money and a direct inflation targeting strategy. It would be also...

In this paper we reflect on the role that fiscal policy could play in the resolution of the crisis in Eurozone countries crippled by both public and private debt, and beset by growth and competitiveness problems. As an illustration, we revisit the Spanish case, a paradigmatic example of the...

We study simple fiscal rules for stabilizing the government debt level in response to asymmetric demand shocks in a country that belongs to a currency union. We compare debt stabilization through tax rate adjustments with debt stabilization through expenditure changes. While rapid and flexible...

We analyse the likely effects of changes in the monetary and financial regimes of EMU countries on the dynamics of output and inflation. In particular, we evaluate the impact of the regime shift on the forecasting performance of reduced-form models. Data for both the pre-EMU and the EMU regimes...