We examine, in a suitable theoretical framework, the relations between monetary and fiscal policies within the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Our stylized setup of EMU includes the following political agents, each endowed with an objective function: (i) A central authority (EC),...

We study a model where monetary and fiscal policy share the task of stabilizing output and inflation, and the central bank has been assigned a mandate for the latter. The optimal fiscal policy does not imply assigning to the government a (symmetric) mandate to stabilize output. Instead, the...