In December 1995, the European Council, metting in Madrid, confirmed "unequivocally" that the third and final stage of economic and monetary union (EMU) will begin on January 1, 1999. The Council chose "euro" as the name of the new single currency and adopted a timetable for decisions and...

This paper is about the financial support fund of the OECD.

This essay takes a fresh look at the lender-of-last-resort issue and asks whether, how, and to what extent national practices should be adapted to the international environment. It begins by reviewing national practices. Then it analyzes, through both theory and evidence, the features that make...

This lecture is about the connections between three types of union - customs union, monetary union, and political union. The first section asks whether monetary integration is a concomitant of commercial integration. The second asks whether political integration is a concomitant of monetary...

This essay is based on the 1997-98 Frank D. Graham Memorial Lecture, which I had the honor of presenting at Princeton University on April 9, 1998. Frank Graham was deeply concerned with the interplay among national policy sovereignty, exchange-rate regimes, and price-level stability. Today, the...

Financial revolutions in Europe have been ascribed to the Italian innovation of the bill of exchange in the thirteenth century and to the British ordering of government debt at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. Less attention has been paid to the series of...