The discussion briefly reviews the events leading up to the adoption of the European Monetary System in March 1979 and the associated Exchange Rate Mechanism. It goes on to describe the Maastricht Treaty and to review the costs and benefits of a common currency. The author also considers the...

Against the background of the recent housing boom and bust in countries such as Spain and Ireland, we investigate in this paper the macroeconomic consequences of cross-border banking in monetary unions such as the euro area. For this purpose, we incorporate in an otherwise standard two-region...

Against the background of the recent housing boom and bust in countries such as Spain and Ireland, we investigate in this paper the macroeconomic consequences of cross-border banking in monetary unions such as the euro area. For this purpose, we incorporate in an otherwise standard two-region...

Against the background of the emergence of macroeconomic imbalances within the European Monetary Union (EMU), we investigate in this paper the macroeconomic consequences of cross-border banking in monetary unions such as the euro area. For this purpose, we incorporate in an otherwise standard...

This paper studies the dynamics of sovereign risk, fiscal policy and the macroeconomy in a two-country monetary union framework under the assumption of a heterogeneous perception of the determinants of sovereign risk by the government and the market participants. The macroeconomic volatility...

This paper contains all of the statistical results underlying our paper The Origin and Diffusion of Shocks to Regional Interest Rates in the United States, 1880-2002. It also contains a table of the underlying data, and a discussion of how the data was constructed.

Plans are far advanced to form a second monetary union, the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ), in Africa. While much attention is being placed on convergence criteria and preparedness of the five aspiring member states, less attention is being placed on how the dynamics of inflation in...