Recent studies on real exchange rates advocate the use of long samples in order to reveal the low frequency properties of the processes. The present paper contributes to this strand of the literature by exploiting recently released time series for the drachma/sterling rate for the period...

This paper enumerates the adventures of the drachma step by step, dividing its story into seven parts. Specifically, its main purpose is to present some historical perspective on the behaviour of the monetary and fiscal policies pursued in Greece during the period from the early 1830s until the...

Fixed exchange rate regimes can be regarded as a “rule with escape clauses”, allowing the monetary authorities to temporarily suspend convertibility and enact a discretionary policy only under well-understood contingencies, such as wartime emergencies and financial panics. Seen from this...

The paper looks at the National Bank of Romania’s issue of banknotes from 1880 through 1914, highlighting the developments in the notes’ cover, the channels whereby the central bank put its notes into circulation, as well as the behaviour of the issuing house during episodes of crisis. The...

The nature of fiscal policies was changed dramatically by the creation of the Eurozone. While prior to the start of the Eurozone, national governments were sovereign in that they could back up the issue of debt by the issue of money, they lost this sovereignty in the Eurozone. This had dramatic...

This paper, after reviewing briefly the early steps of European monetary integration and key elements of the EMU project as reflected in the Treaty of Maastricht, analyses the monetary integration strategy and convergence experience of member states, in particular that of Greece, in the 1990s...

The present paper exploits the idea that empirical estimates of the long-run PPP relationship may compound two distinct influences coming from the behavior of market participants and policy makers when the latter are targeting the exchange rate. This tends to bias tests of long-run PPP against...

This paper attempts to provide, for the first time, a survey of the construction of estimates of the quantity of money in Greece since the inception of the National Bank of Greece in 1842 until the eve of WWII. Specifically, we describe in detail the methods of construction and the sources of...

In the framework of the broader political and economic development of the individual states on Balkan Peninsula the author has made the comparison between the performance of the banking sector in Yugoslavia, Romania, Greece and Bulgaria. The analysis was carried out on the sample of balance...