In the aftermath of World War II, Italy and France experienced high inflation. The two countries enacted remarkably similar economic policy measures, but stabilization came at different times: for Italy at the end of 1947, for France a year later. Traditional explanations for the regained price...

Traditional analyses of standards in international trade identify standards as government regulations and investigate the potential for distortion of trade flows. In reality, however, private industry groups exercise critical influence on the determination of technical standards. The composition...

The thesis of this paper is that more transparent, rule-bound and subtle mechanisms for policy coordination will be needed to ensure the success of an enlarged European Union. A common policy is a public good with distributional implications. Economists have developed a large number of plausible...

This paper questions the link between the establishment of a common currency among several countries and the necessity of political coordination. It begins by discussing why conducting a single monetary policy is thought to be easier within a single political unit. It then proceeds to enquire...

When trade involves differentiated products, preferential ties to a group settled abroad facilitate an exporter's entry into the foreign market by providing information and access to distribution channels. This contrasts with the difficulties experienced by an unattached producer unfamiliar with...

Borrowing from the experience of environmental markets, this paper proposes a system of tradable deficit permits as an efficient mechanism for implementing fiscal constraints in the European Monetary Union: having chosen an aggregate target for the Union and an initial distribution of permits,...

The current debate in Western Europe centers on the relationship between economic and political integration. To address this problem, we construct a simple general equilibrium model in which the returns to trading are directly affected by the availability of a public good. In our model,...

We develop a competitive equilibrium theory of a market for votes. Before voting on a binary issue, individuals may buy and sell their votes with each other. We define the concept of Ex Ante Vote-Trading Equilibrium, identify weak sufficient conditions for existence, and construct one such...

This paper presents a simple general equilibrium model of two countries using a common currency. The goal is to study how the monetary arrangement influences the optimum financing of a public good. If the two countries are allowed to print the common currency autonomously, they will finance...

Incomplete information in the international market creates difficulty in matching agents with productive opportunities and interferes with the ability of prices to allocate scarce resources across countries. Resource-price differentials may not be eliminated and domestic resource supplies may...