Whether countries benefit from forming a monetary union depends critically on the way monetary policy is conducted. This is mainly because monetary policy determines whether and to what extent a flexible nominal exchange rate fosters or hampers macroeconomic stabilization, even if monetary...

The New Keynesian DSGE literature has come to the consensus that, from the perspective of business cycle stabilization, countries are worse off in terms of welfare by forming a monetary union. This consensus, however, is based on the assumption of monetary policy being optimal. Using a standard...

The move to monetary union in Europe led to convergence of interest rates among the participating countries. This was associated with notable cross-country differences in the behaviour of key macroeconomic aggregates. Compared to the low interest rate countries, former high interest rate...

There are potential gains for most countries joining the planned EMU. It is argued that these gains are not primarily due to the creation of a currency area but, they depend on the high degree of political independence a European central bank can obtain. The transition path to the EMU with its...

This paper summarizes the results of CASE's research project on 'Strategies for Joining the EMU' and proposes policy recommendations both for new member states (on how to manage their accession to the Eurozone) and for the European Commission, ECB and old member states (on how to manage and...

To deal with changes of capitalized seignorage due to EMU, we supply the still missing capital-theoretical framework. We show that seignorage pooling of EMU is composed of two components, a dynamic component and a static component. By its dynamic component, the pool provides insurance against...

As European countries strive to meet the Maastricht criteria before the end of 1997, doubts and concerns about the new institutional framework are rapidly growing . On one hand, the worsening unemployment rate raises the spectre of further tightening of fiscal and monetary policy (Bankers'...

Hikes in U.S. interest rates in 1999-2000 have started to spill over to other economies' interest rates, which in many countries have risen to reflect the higher U.S. rates. Are countries with flexible exchange rates better able to isolate their domestic interest rates from this type of negative...