Virtual currencies are a contemporary form of private money. Thanks to their technological properties, their global transaction networks are relatively safe, transparent, and fast. This gives them good prospects for further development. However, they remain unlikely to challenge the dominant...

Exchange market pressure (EMP) measures the pressure on a currency to depreciate. It adds to the actual depreciation a weighted combination of policy instruments used to ward off depreciation, such as interest rates and foreign exchange interventions, where the weights are their effectiveness....

In view of the requirements of Stage 2 of European Monetary Union (EMU) for accession to the European Union, this paper examines the desirability for, and the ability of, the lead candidates in Central and Eastern Europe to participate in the new exchange rate mechanism (ERM2) and eventually in...

The article analyses recent tendencies in the monetary system with an emphasis on events taking place in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states. The importance of these countries goes far beyond oil deliveries as their surpluses stemming from oil export have become a key pillar in...

Since the beginning of the transition process from centrally planed to market economies, East European countries have experienced relatively high inflation and a market depreciation of their currency. Their monetary systems have gone through dramatic changes in the recent ten years, making the...

The actual mainstream view of academics emphasizes the so-called two corner solution with either completely fixed or independently floating exchange rates. We will argue in this paper that the requirements for fixed rates are very restrictive to be successful. On the other hand, the advantage of...

In this paper we formalize the framework for monetary and exchange rate policy presented in Bofinger and Wollmershäuser [2001a]. We develop a simple comparative static model for an open economy that allows us to discuss monetary policy under the exchange rate strategies of independently...