The global financial crisis created new challenges for the states that have joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007, but that are not yet members of the Euro zone; the maintenance of the convergence indicators below the reference values is a real challenge for the new EU member states. This...

In this paper, we analyze the implications of price setting restrictions for the conduct of cyclical fiscal and monetary policy. We consider an environment with monopolistic competitive firms, a shopping time technology, prices set one period in advance, and government expenditures that must be...

We study environments with sticky prices, wages or portfolios where it is feasible and optimal to use monetary policy to replicate the allocation under full flexibility. In these environments the optimal policy does not depend on the scope of the frictions. In this sense, the strength of the...

What instruments of monetary policy must be used in order to implement a unique equilibrium? This paper revisits the issues addressed by Sargent and Wallace (1975) on the multiplicity of equilibria when policy isconducted with interest rate rules. We show that the appropriate interestrate...

We consider standard cash-in-advance monetary models and show that there are interest rate or money supply rules such that equilibria are unique. The existence of these single instrument rules depends on whether the economy has an infinite horizon or an arbitrarily large but finite horizon.

We consider a standard cash in advance monetary model with flexible prices or prices set in advance and show that there are interest rate or money supply rules such that equilibria are unique. The existence of these single instrument rules depends on whether the economy has an infinite horizon...

We show that the Friedman rule is optimal in the standard transactions techology monetary model whether the alternative fiscal instrument is a consumption tax, an income tax, or both, and whether taxes are paid with money or not. These results are at odds with recent literature. We show that an...

We address in this paper the issue of leadership when two governments provide public goods to their constituencies with cross border externalities as both public goods are valued by consumers in both countries. We study a timing game between two different countries: before providing public...

This paper studies the inflationary implications of interest bearing regional debt in a monetary union. Is this debt simply backed by future taxation with non inflationary consequences ?. Or will the circulation of region debt induce monetization by a central bank ?. We argue here that both...

It is believed that a shock, common to a set of countries with identical fundamentals, has identical outcomes across countries. We show that in general, when specialization in production is such that a common shock creates a missing role for labor mobility across countries, the terms of trade of...