The political economy literature shows that monetary hegemony guarantees significant privileges to a country's economy — governments gain greater flexibility in their budgetary and current accounts without incurring significant macroeconomic imbalances. Such greater economic policy flexibility...

Many countries around the world have experienced banking crises in the past two decades, and all countries are witnessing substantial changes in the structure and nature of banking. These developments have led national and multilateral policymakers to focus increased attention on the crucial...

This paper compares relative unit labour cost developments in the countries of the euro-area since the beginning of the European Monetary Union (EMU) both with historical developments and with intra-regional unit labour cost developments in the United States of America and Germany. To this end,...

The United States has over 115 different state and federal government agencies regulating financial services, which encompasses banking, securities and insurance firms and products. Various commentators have noted that at least part of the blame for the financial crisis of 2007-2009 in the...

We study the apparent disconnect between what countries announce to be their exchange rate regime and what they de facto implement. Even though discrepancies between announcements and de facto polices are frequent, there is a lack of understanding of actual patterns and underlying reasons. We...