This paper investigates the importance of fiscal policy in providing macroeconomic stabilisation in a monetary union. We use a microfounded New Keynesian model of a monetary union which incorporates persistence in inflation and non-Ricardian consumers, and derive optimal simple rules for fiscal...

In this paper we analyse the likely effects of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) on European unemployment. We start by describing the current unemployment situation in the European Union (EU). In so doing, we try to assess the relative importance of European, national and regional shocks in...

Several recent studies imply that the response of national saving to fiscal policy is non-monotonic. In this paper, we use two data sets to search for the circumstances in which such non-monotonic responses arise: one refers to a sample of OECD countries, as in previous studies, and one to a...

We use robust control techniques to study the effects of model uncertainty on monetary policy in an estimated, semi-structural, small-open-economy model of the U.K. Compared to the closed economy, the presence of an exchange rate channel for monetary policy not only produces new trade-offs for...

We study optimal monetary and fiscal stabilization policy in a two-country monetary union in the presence of (inefficient) mark-up shocks, price rigidities and monopolistic competition. The underlying dynamic system contains two Phillips curves featuring public spending and mark-up shocks. We...

This chapter studies optimal monetary stabilization policy in interdependent open economies, by proposing a unified analytical framework systematizing the existing literature. In the model, the combination of complete exchange-rate pass-through (`producer currency pricing') and frictionless...

This Paper investigates the importance of fiscal policy in providing macroeconomic stabilisation in a monetary union. We use a microfounded New Keynesian model of a monetary union that incorporates persistence in inflation, and examine non-cooperative interactions of fiscal and monetary...

This Paper studies the role of asset-market completeness for the properties of optimal policy. A suitable framework for this purpose is the small open economy with complete international asset markets. For in this environment changes in policy represent country-specific risk diversifiable in...

We generalise the analysis of inflation bias with dynamic Phillips curves in three respects. First, we examine the discretionary (time consistent) solution in cases where the Phillips curve has both a backward looking and forward-looking component. Second, we show that the commitment (time...

We analyse the stability of countries within a monetary union in the face of asymmetric shocks, using a simple but widely applicable model. We show that members of the union may be subject to severe, and possibly unstable, cycles following asymmetric shocks if there is a significant backward...