While the European Monetary Union (EMU) is now a real ity, debate among economists nonetheless continues about the design and desirability of monetary unions.Since an essential element of a monetary union is the delegation of monetary power to a single centralized entity, one of the key issues...

This paper explores the gains to monetary union. We consider a two-country overlapping generations model. Agents work when young and have random tastes over the composition (domestic vs. foreign goods) of old age consumption. In equilibrium, governments require that local currncy be used for...

We study the relationship between social segmentation and income inequality by means of the economic theory of clubs with private provision of the club good. After having characterized the equilibrium partition of society in clubs and investigating its characteristics, we show how the clubs'...

Examples abound in economics, politics and society where agents can enter partial cooperation schemes, i.e. they can collude with a subset of agents. Several constributions devoted to specific settings have claimed that such partial cooperation actually worsens welfare compared to the...

We consider a game where agents commit to action for two periods. This implies two different patterns of decisions: agents can synchronize or stagger their decisions. We compare the outcomes of both timing patterns, and show that spillovers and strategic interactions are crucial for such a...