This paper addresses arguments that a system of fiscal insurance between member states of the European Union is needed to act in replacement of nominal exchange rate flexibility as an automatic stabilizer under monetary union. Many authors have argued or assumed that asymmetric real...

Building on a micro-founded model of a two region-world economy in the tradition of the new open economy literature, this paper analyses the strategic interaction of large wage-setters and the central bank when switching from a regime of uncoordinated national monetary policies to a monetary...

We provide empirical estimates of the risk-sharing and redistributive properties of the German federal from 1970 until 2006, with special attention to the effects of German fiscal system base unification. We find that tax revenue sharing between the states and the federal government and the...

While monetary policy decisions are mainly taken by Committees (as is the case for the ECB, or for the Federal Reserve), the literature largely stands on the …ction of a single central banker, be it (or not) a conservative one. The purpose here is to consider explicitly the plural dimension of...

In contrast to Robert Mundell's Optimum Currency Area theory and his recommendation of forming a monetary union, the economic fundamentals of Euro area member countries have not harmonized. The opposite holds: the Euro core countries - most of all Germany, but also the Netherlands and Finland -...

We provide empirical estimates of the risk-sharing and redistributive properties of the German federal fiscal system based on data from 1970 until 2006, with special attention to the effects of German unification. We find that tax revenue sharing between the states and the federal government and...

The implications of monetary unification for fiscal policies are discussed. The roles of nominal exchange rate flexibility in the presence of asymmetric national shocks and nominal price rigidities as an automatic stabilizer and source of disturbances to real economic performance are reviewed....

We provide empirical estimates of the risksharing and redistributive properties of fiscal equalization among the states of the German federation. Fiscal equalization serves as a mechanism to insure state budgets against asymmetric revenue shocks, but provides almost no insurance against regional...