The creation of EMU and the ECB has triggered a discussion of the future of EMU. Independent observers have pointed to a number of shortcomings or hazard areas' in the construction of EMU, such as the absence of a central lender of last resort function for EMU, the lack of a central authority...

If Stage Three of EMU starts on January 1, 1999, transition issues remain on two time scales. Until July 1, 2002, national currencies and the euro co-exist as legal tender. We argue that intra-EMU currency risk exists in principle during that period, but that no EMU member can be forced out...

This paper advances the hypothesis that the EUS crisis was caused by German unification. The unification has implied a massive resource demand which parallels the US resource demand following Reagan's tax reforms in the eighties. The resource demand revised the German interest rates relative to...

When countries of different sizes participate in a cooperative agreement, the potential gain from deviation determines the minimum power that each country requires in the common decision-making. <br><bR>This paper studies the problem in the context of a monetary union - multiple countries sharing a...

We compare risk sharing in response to demand and supply shocks in four types of currency unions: segmented markets; a banking union; a capital market union; and complete financial markets. We show that a banking union is efficient at sharing all domestic demand shocks (deleveraging, fiscal...

Once upon a time, in the 1990s, it was widely agreed that neither Europe nor the United States was an optimum currency area, although moderating this concern was the finding that it was possible to distinguish a regional core and periphery (Bayoumi and Eichengreen, 1993). Revisiting these...

We study the macroeconomic effects of internal devaluations undertaken by a periphery of countries belonging to a monetary union. We find that internal devaluations have large and positive output effects in the long run. Through an expectations channel, most of these effects carry over to the...

This paper studies the implications of the circulation of interest bearing regional debt in a monetary union. Does the circulation of this debt have the same monetary implications as the printing of money by a central government? Or are the obligations of this debt simply backed by future...

The desirability of fiscal constraints in monetary unions depends critically on whether the monetary authority can commit to follow its policies. If it can commit, then debt constraints can only impose costs. If it cannot commit, then fiscal policy has a free-rider problem, and debt constraints...

We characterize fiscal and monetary policy in a monetary union with the potential for rollover crises in sovereign debt markets. Member-country fiscal authorities lack commitment to repay their debt and choose fiscal policy independently. A common monetary authority chooses inflation for the...