The oil-rich economies of Russia and Kazakhstan started growing in the 2000’s, and the consequence was a rapid rise of labour migration in the post-Soviet space. Within a decade labour migration became a highly visible phenomenon with significant economic and social consequences. It completely...

In a 2-country monetary union, this paper studies a Stackelberg game be- tween the Central Banker and two symmetrical countries. The central banker chooses the money supply. In each country, there is a union who acts as a monopoly of labor supply. Firms are wage and price takers. We analyze the...

This paper analyzes the costs and benefits for an emerging economy to formally adopt dollarization. The magnitude of the costs and benefits involved in this process will not be the same for all countries and depend on the particular characteristics of each economy as well as its relationship...

Some countries may face choice between targeting inflation independently and entering a monetary union that targets inflation. This paper shows that the choice of a country in favour of monetary union may be motivated by asymmetrical supply shocks. The demand shocks are neutralised under these...

About five decades the Franc CFA-Zone in Western and Central Africa was praised as incarnation of economic and political stability in Africa, backed by France. But free convertibility and fixed parity, guaranteed by the French Treasury, mainly served the interest of a small elite of the...