In this paper we present a model for the optimal composition of a federal or supra-national committee. The involvement of regional (national) entities in federal committees is typically motivated by their knowledge of regional information about the state of the economy. Using this argument we...

Regional integration for at least the last sixty years has focused on trade integration. Balassa’s canonical taxonomy of regional trading arrangements is often interpreted as a sequence from free trade area through customs union and common market to economic union. In the 1980s the concept of...

In this paper we examine the stability of the real exchange rate and the macroeconomic effects of alternative exchange-rate regimes, including currency union, on real exchange-rate behaviour. We focus on the Irish punt in order to exploit its diversity of experience over different nominal...