An important tension had been underlying the first decade of the European Monetary Union. On the one hand, governments had embraced a revolutionary prospect when designing its institutions. They called on market forces and supranational institutions to limit popular democracy and scale back the...

This paper analyzes two channels of business cycle convergence, which are subsequently applied to the EU acceding countries. First, trade intensity and intra-industry trade is found to induce a convergence of business cycles. This finding confirms the OCA endogeneity hypothesis. Second, labor...

This work compares France and Italy's policies on European monetary integration from the early 1970s arguing that the very different state structures determined the different policies pursued towards European monetary integration. France is a 'strong' state in terms of macroeconomic...

This paper investigates the transition of the EU candidate countries with a currency board arrangement (CBA) to the euro-zone. The arguments for and against retaining a CBA while participating in the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the EU (ERMII) are discussed. Then, we show in the framework of a...