An investigation of the problems of policy formation has to take account of the way in which expectations may be formed. The assumption of rationality is often made on the grounds that there is no reason to assume that views of the future display any particular bias. Some authors take this...

*The European Union will enter Stage Three of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999. The development of euro financial markets and thickness externalities in the use of the euro as means of payment will be the major factors determining the importance of the euro as an international currency....

This paper presents an investigation of the relationship between fiscal policies, fundamental equilibrium real exchange rates and misalignments under fixed nominal exchange rate regimes like those proposed by McKinnon and supply-side fiscal policy. The medium-run effects operate mainly through...

The persistently high rate of unemployment has probably been Western Europe's most important economic problem of the 1970s and 1980s. Average unemployment rose relentlessly between the early seventies and the mid-eighties, in contrast to the United States, where unemployment has displayed a...

In this paper I examine issues of optimal stabilization in two types of world economy, a competitive one where all countries are small, and one where there is a Stackelberg leader. The focus is on the 1985 target zones proposal of Williamson, according to which there should be a periodic fixing...

In the paper I examine the trade-offs between internal and external balance and the role of macroeconomic policy in Greece. I estimate and test versions of the two principal open economy macromodels: the imperfect-substitutes, one-sector model, and the two-sector model with nontraded goods. Both...

In this paper I examine optimal monetary policy and the informational implications of the Phillips curve in a stochastic model of a small open economy. It is assumed that the economy produces both traded and non-traded goods, that capital mobility is perfect and that the economy faces a variety...

The size and economic relevance of Europe may imply a new role for the EURO in the international financial markets. But will the EURO compete with the $US and the Yen for a place in the basket of international currencies? Will that induce a bipolar or indeed tri-polar system, and with what...

This paper examines the appreciation of the dollar over the period 1980-85. The standard theories try to explain the increased demand for dollar assets by differential rates of return on bonds or by "safe-haven" arguments associated with the lower riskiness of United States assets. Neither of...

Monetary arrangements in Europe vacillated wildly over the last decade, and they may be expected to continue to do so over the next. The literature on this chaotic process has focused on issues of credibility. Here, we focus instead on the longer-run implications of Europe's choice of monetary...