Is the European Community (EC) (already) a desirable currency area? There are two kinds of reasons why it may not. The first reason is that national propensities to inflate may be too different within the EC to permit the aboundonment of exchange-rate changes. Nominal exchange-rate changes are...

At the latest since 1978, international shifts in the demand for money have widely been recognized as a major problem for monetary-policy making under flexible exchange rates. To the extent that such shifts are unpredictable, the case for monetary preannouncement is weakened (Giersch, 1977; Girton,...