The decision on EMU strongly affects the course of monetary and fiscal policies in 1997 and especially in 1998. We assume that the monetary union will start in January 1, 1999 with a sizable number of participating countries. Once the decision on the members is made in the spring of 1998, any...

Die Europäische Währungsunion (EWU) soll am 1. Januar 1999 starten. Nicht auszuschließen ist, daß die Kriterien des Maastrichter Vertrags bei der Entscheidung über den Teilnehmerkreis Anfang 1998 großzügig gehandhabt werden und damit die Zahl der Teilnehmer hoch sein wird. Eine strikte...

Real effective exchange rates and economic activity in trading partner countries have a considerable impact on real exports of the G7-countries. Using an errorcorrection framework we find that the short-run and the long-run effects differ substantially between the countries. The relative...

Two theoretical modeis are developed. One describes the behavior of monetary policy before elections, in case of policy instruments being controlled by the government. The other one discusses the effects of a change in the ruling party, if parties differ in the weight they attribute to Inflation...

A theoretical model is developed to describe the behavior of dependent and independent central banks. In an empirical test, the reaction functions of six central banks of industrial countries with different degrees of independence are estimated using an error correction framework. In shock...