This paper deals with potential instabilities in the Eurozone stemming from an insufficient interplay between monetary policy and reform effort on the one hand and the emergence of intra-Euro area divergences on the other. As a first step, we assess the effect of EMU on structural reform and...

Intra-European exchange rate variability has significant economic costs. VAR causality tests show that higher short-run variability of exchange rates against other EU currencies was associated with higher unemployment, less employment, and lower investment for most EU member countries....

The belief that the ECB follows the US Federal Reserve in setting its policy is so entrenched with market participants and commentators that the search for empirical support would seem to be a trivial task. However, this is not the case. We find that the ECB is indeed often influenced by the...

Evaluating the costs and benefits of exchange rate stability requires a somewhat different approach for Mercosur than for the EU. EU member countries are highly integrated in terms of trade in goods and services. By contrast, trade integration within Mercosur is much more limited, intra-area...

A fixed exchange rate regime can experience a self-fulfilling crisis if a high risk premium leads to high domestic interest rates that depress domestic activity, and thus make it more likely that the government will actually abandon the system. Depending on the parameter configuration, two...

This paper suggests that output in the transition economies of eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union is related to, firstly, macroeconomic stabilization, and secondly, the speed of transition. The statistical analysis suggests that those countries which have been most...

Fourteen years have now passed since the fall of the Berlin wall, signaling the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. A score of new countries emerged as the Soviet Union disintegrated and its former satellites in Central Europe set out to renew their historical links with Western...

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (CEE-3) could now be only four years away from joining the euro. Moreover, these countries seem better placed than were some of the current euro area members (Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal) at a comparable point in time leading up to their accession to...

The massive financial instability of 2007-08 was, in the main, the result of lax monetary policy. Regulation compounded this error by allowing and encouraging excessive leverage and maturity transformation by banks. Innovation did contribute to reckless credit expansion and investments, but...

This paper presents a simple, basic model to compute the welfare consequences of the introduction of a tariff on the CO2 content of imported goods in a country that already imposes a domestic carbon tax. The main finding is that the introduction of a carbon import tariff increases global welfare...