Using a small empirical model of inflation, output, and money estimated on U.S. data, we compare the relative performance of monetary targeting and inflation targeting. The results show that monetary targeting would be quite inefficient, with both higher inflation and output variability. This is...

This paper is a brief evaluation of the Eurosystem's monetary-policy regime after its first year, in particular of the extent to which it is similar to inflation targeting as practiced by an increasing number of central banks. I examine the Eurosystem's goals, framework for monetary-policy...

As a result of the Balassa effect relative prices change rapidly between and within the euro countries. Thus it is impossible to find a common monetary policy that will result in price stability in all countries. Based on empirical estimates of the Balassa model, the paper calculates a minimum...

Developments in open-economy modeling, and the accumulation of experience with the monetary policy regimes prevailing in the United Kingdom and the euro area, have increased our ability to evaluate the effects that joining monetary union would have on the U.K. economy. This paper considers the...

This study grounds the establishment of EMU and the euro in the context of the history of international monetary cooperation and of monetary unions, above all in the U.S., Germany and Italy. The purpose of national monetary unions was to reduce transactions costs of multiple currencies and...

The paper provides and empirical characterization of fiscal policy in the euro area and in a group of twenty-two OECD economies over the period from 1970 until 2007. Using the cyclically-adjusted fiscal balance we document that policy in the euro area has been mildly pro-cyclical. The adoption...

This paper was prepared for a session of the 2009 American Economic Association meeting devoted to examining the views of American economists about the euro and the European Economic and Monetary Union on the tenth anniversary of the euro. I had written an article in 1992 in the Economist and...

This paper investigates whether or not the adoption of the Euro has facilitated the introduction of structural reforms, defined as deregulation in the product markets and liberalization and deregulation in the labor markets. After reviewing the theoretical arguments that may link the adoption of...