The conservative central banker has come under attack recently. Explicitly modeling the interaction of a trade union with monetary policy, it has been argued that the standard solution to the inflationary bias in monetary policy might actually be welfare reducing if the trade union has an...

The implementation of European Union directives into national law is at the discretion of member states. We analyze incentives for member states to deviate from these directives when the European Commission may sue a defecting member state and rulings at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) are...

The implementation of European Union directives into national law is at the discretion of member states. We analyze incentives for member states to deviate from these directives when the European Commission may sue a defecting member state and rulings at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) are...

The paper explores the interaction between the proposed monetary union for ECOWAS and structural reforms of fiscal policy. The effects depend to a large extent on the degree of similarity of member countries. In a monetary union of similar countries, member states run a more distortive fiscal...

Das Papier untersucht die Rolle von IWF, Weltbank und WTO und ihre Arbeitsteilung. Ich diskutiere die Gründe für ihre Existenz und ihre ursprünglichen Aufgaben und frage, inwieweit es ihnen gelungen ist, sich den veränderten Bedingungen und ihren neuen Aufgaben anzupassen....

Can process conditionality really enhance poverty reduction in developing countries? This question is addressed in the framework of a politico-economic model considering political distortions both on the recipient and on the donor side. It turns out that process conditionality is a very useful...

Das Papier diskutiert die Ausgestaltung des EU Finanzsystems aus polit-ökonomischer Perspektive. Die jetzige Form der Umverteilung lässt sich aus ökonomischer Sicht nicht nachvollziehen; vielmehr kann dies als ein System von politischen Seitenzahlungen verstanden werden. Es wird argumentiert,...

The enlargement of the European Monetary Union is likely to lead to an increase of uncertainty about the transmission of monetary policy for the larger union. Adding new members to the central bank council will in addition imply that the preferences of the enlarged council will be uncertain in...

The paper explores the interaction between debt crises and devaluation. Since the optimal level of devaluation in a crisis depends on the level of debt that has to be serviced, a default makes a devaluation less likely. Expected devaluation depends thus on expectations about default which is...

The paper reviews exchange rate options for Mercosur countries. We start from the observation that most of the countries in the region have a longstanding tendency to adopt fixed exchange rates, and ask how such a system could best be designed. The Argentine crisis has demonstrated that...