IMF forecasts and the EU's Fiscal Compact foresee Europe's heavily indebted countries running primary budget surpluses of as much as 5 percent of GDP for as long as 10 years in order to maintain debt sustainability and bring their debt/GDP ratios down to the Compact's 60 percent target. We show...

I provide a structured comparison of the nineteenth-century classical gold standard and the Euro, basing my analysis heavily on recent research. Both similarities and differences are evident in the historical record. Both regimes were vaunted as engines of convergence, but in both cases...

It is rare for countries to give up their currencies and thus their ability to influence such critical aspects of their economies as interest and exchange rates. Yet ten years ago a number of European countries did exactly that when they adopted the euro. Despite some dissent, there were a...

Intro -- Contents -- 1. Introduction / Barry Eichengreen and Jeffry Frieden -- Part 1: Economic and Monetary Union -- 2. The Transition to Economic and Monetary Union / Geoffrey Garrett -- 3. The Political Economy of French Economic Policy in the Perspective of EMU / Christian de Boissieu and...

In this paper we describe some of the opportunities and perils for international monetary cooperation associated with EMU. Our approach brings together two strands in the literature: one concerned with institutions, the other focusing on policy consensus

This article considers the evolution of Europe's monetary union over the next five to ten years, concentrating on the most important likely change, namely the increased number and heterogeneity of participating states