Throughout most of the post-war period, the fight against inflation was one of the most important tasks of economic policymakers. For some months now, with ample spare capacity in major advanced industrial countries and inflation receding in the wake of the fall of oil prices, some commentators...

Detailed comparisons with Germany and Switzerland as well as an analysis of the time pattern of sub-indices of the Consumer Price Index provide no indication that the introduction of the euro had any strong inflationary impact. In some sectors (chiefly in services), however, price increases did...