The pending enlargement of the European Monetary Union (EMU) has brought to the fore the discussion of the voting right distribution in the European Central Bank (ECB) council. We show that, in a model where labor unions internalize the inflationary consequences of wage setting, deviating from a...

The European Council's decisions to implement the De Larosiere recommendations for a reformed approach to micro-level financial supervision and a new European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) are to be welcomed. The ECB's central role in the ESRB is also to be welcomed. However, the limited role...

The past few months have exposed serious problems in relation to Europe's ability to cope with financial stress. Placing the new Financial Stability funds on a permanent basis, in the form of a new European Monetary Fund will be required if Europe is to deal effectively with the serious debt...

The paper addresses the question what effects the enlargement of a monetary union will have on necessary structural reforms in the (low distortion) member countries and the (high distortion) candidate countries. While monetary union lowers reforms in the candidate countries, members of the...

It is widely debated whether a monetary union has to be accompanied by a fiscal transfer scheme to accommodate asymmetric shocks. We build a model of a monetary union with a central bank and two heterogeneous countries that are linked by a fiscal transfer scheme with repercussions on monetary...