The paper elaborates on two successive monetary policy regimes in Austria: First, the economic and political background of the hard currency policy of the 1980s and 1990s, linking the schilling to the D- mark, is analysed. Second, the changeover in 1999 to EMU and its implications for Austria's...

Disturbances in international financial markets have added to the momentum of structural adjustment of national banking systems. With financial transactions becoming more and more concentrated in large universal banks, the smaller institutions specializing by tradition in particular groups of...