This paper challenges the conventional view that foreign exchange risk premiums are small, not volatile, and unrelated to macroeconomic variables. For the Italian lira (1987-94), unconditional risk premiums—constructed using survey data to measure exchange rate expectations—are found to be...

This paper compares the experience with exchange-rate–based stabilization (ERBS) of four Western European countries with that of high-inflation developing countries. In general, the behavior of key macroeconomic variables—inflation, output, demand, the real exchange rate and the current...

Italy’s pension system was reformed in August 1995. The new system has various desirable long-run properties and, overall, it represents an improvement over earlier systems. However, it fails to address two longstanding problems: extremely high contribution rates, and a lack of provisions for...