This paper looks at whether public attitudes towards a single European currency held in the European Union member states reflect a rational evaluation of the involved benefits and costs. It finds that they do: the looser monetary and fiscal policy was in the past, and the more time a country...

This note merges the fact that real activity is persistent with a Barro-Gordon type model of endogenous monetary policy. It shows that persistence crucially affects policy choices. This applies in noncooperative games with a finite horizon and in games with an infinite horizon. Always,...