This paper assesses the East Asian Economies' openness to cross-border capital flows and exchange rate arrangements in the past decades, with the main focus on emerging market economies. Using Mundell's trilemma indexes, we note that the convergence of the three policy goals in East Asia toward...

I describe the challenge of fully integrating securities markets in Europe by integrating the clearing and settlement functionalities. The initial condition is characterized by a multitude of standards, conventions, regulation and laws, which are inconsistent with a barrier-free post-trading...

The stability of the EMS depends crucially on realignment expectations of the market participants. In this paper we discuss how to measure such expectations and how to relate them to economic fundamentals, central bank reputation, and institutional arrangements of the EMS. We find the following...

The paper discusses the policy problems of a project aimed at substituting several national currencies with one single currency. While these problems are of general interest, the analysis is motivated by the plan for Economic and Monetary Union among the members of the European Community. The...

This paper discusses a model corporate tax system based on the application of the residence principle. This tax system, while preserving national sovereignties, minimizes the distortions from international capital mobility. The paper is motivated by an analysis of European capital income tax...

This paper addresses the question of whether the European Monetary System can be copied outside Europe. Our answer is negative. The EMS is just one element of a more comprehensive design of institutional integration within Europe: the presence of the European Economic Community, and the...

This paper defines two competing hypotheses on the working of fixed exchange rates. The "symmetry" hypothesis states that every country is concerned with the good functioning of the system, and cannot afford to deviate from world averages. Every country is just left to follow the rules of the...

This paper looks at the short history of the Eurozone through the lens of an evolutionary approach to forming new institutions. The euro has operated as a currency without a state, under the dominance of Germany. This has so far allowed the euro to achieve a number of design objectives, and this...

This paper investigates the impact of credit rating changes on the sovereign spreads in the European Union and investigates the macro and financial factors that account for the time varying effects of a given credit rating change. We find that changes of ratings are informative, economically...

The global crisis highlights the continued vulnerability of developing countries to shocks from advanced economies. Just a few years after the global crisis, the eurozone sovereign debt crisis has emerged as the single biggest threat to the global outlook. In this paper, we apply the event study...