I study the macroeconomic costs (both in terms of stabilization and welfare) of the relinquishment of monetary policy independence associated with the membership of a currency area. The analysis is framed within a general equilibrium model of the world economy, composed by a large closed Union...

Industrial countries moving from fixed to floating exchange rate regimes experience dramatic rises in the variability of the real exchange rate. This evidence, forcefully documented by Mussa (1986), is a puzzle to the extent that it is hard to reconcile with the assumption of flexible prices....

We lay out a tractable small open economy version of the canonical sticky price model, and use it as a framework to study the properties of three alternative monetary regimes: (a) optimal monetary policy, (b) a Taylor rule, and (c) an exchange rate peg. Several interesting results emerge from...