In the study, the relevance of several optimum-currency-area (OCA) criteria is formally worked out in a welfare approach. The optimum monetary-policy rules of the supranational central bank are derived within the Barro-Gordon framework, and consideration is given to how the welfare of the member...

The lingering memory of the 1997 Asian Financial crisis coupled with the successful establishment of the European Union in 1999 with the common currency namely the Euro has triggered a great deal of research interest on the optimality of ASEAN as a Common Currency Area. A meta-Analysis of...

This paper investigates the macroeconomic implications of different regimes of international fiscal coordination and monetary-fiscal cooperation in a monetary union with independent fiscal authorities that act strategically vis a vis a common central bank. In the presence of other policy goals...

Anecdotal evidence shows that in spite of regional efforts towards achieving convergence, the single digit inflation objective has not been realized. The jury is still out on the dynamics of price level convergence and the monetary authorities’ relative weights in the loss function....

Policy mix problems may arise in a monetary union with centralized monetary policy and decentralized fiscal policy. A consequence of this may be an inappropriate stabilization of shocks. This paper addresses how policy coordination problems are affected by the objectives of the monetary...

In monetary unions, monetary policy is typically made by delegates of the member countries. This procedure raises the possibility of strategic delegation - that countries may choose the types of delegates to influence outcomes in their favor. We show that without commitment in monetary policy,...

We analyse the stability of countries within a monetary union in the face of asymmetric shocks, using a simple but widely applicable model. We show that members of the union may be subject to severe cycles following asymmetric shocks if there is a significant backward looking element in...

This paper investigates the importance of fiscal policy in providing macroeconomic stabilisation in a monetary union. We use a microfounded New Keynesian model of a monetary union which incorporates persistence in inflation, and examine non-cooperative interactions of fiscal and monetary...

There are potential gains for most countries joining the planned EMU. It is argued that these gains are not primarily due to the creation of a currency area but, they depend on the high degree of political independence a European central bank can obtain. The transition path to the EMU with its...

If discretionary monetary policy implies an inflation bias, monetary unification boosts the accumulation of public debt. The additional debt accumulation is welfare reducing only if governments are sufficiently myopic. In the presence of myopic governments, debt ceilings play a useful role in...