In its present set-up, the EMU could be expected to follow its historical predecessor, the Latin Monetary Union, which was founded in 1865 and in effect ended in 1914. Then as now, it was impossible to coerce sovereign states to follow the rules needed to establish a single currency.

Die Ankündigung des Social-Media-Giganten Facebook, eine neue »Weltwährung« mit dem Blockchain-basierten Zahlungssystem Libra einführen zu wollen, löste international kontroverse Diskussionen über Vor- und Nachteile von Kryptowährungen aus. Die Reaktionen reichten von Begeisterung über...

Monetarism is hard to define because it is not the doctrine of a school that is sharply differentiated from the rival Keynesian and new classical schools. While some ecconomists are clearly monetarists, others take intermediate positions that make it more or less arbitrary whether to call them...

The widespread belief that monetarism has failed is open to question. Certain strong monetarist positions have been damaged by unfolding events, but more moderate propositions live on in current ""Keynesian"" consensus.

This paper reviews and appraises the debate about whether the central bank should pursue counter-cyclical policy or generate a stable monetary growth rate. It focuses on whether the participants have followed the rules of "good conversation," and concludes that they have not. Monetarist have...

Why was the Fed so inflationary in 1965-79? No single explanation suffices. Forecast errors and poor operating procedures played at most a minor role. Unwillingness to accept greater interest-rate variation and cognitive errors played a greater role. Political pressures also played a role, but,...

In 1956 when Friedman published his ""The Quantity Theory of Money: A Restatement"" he faced a daunting task because of the widespread hostility to the quantity theory. This paper looks at the rhetoric (in the non-pejorative sense of the term) that he used to overcome this obstacle, and at some...

Many of Boettke''s criticisms of formalist economics are justified. However, he defines it so broadly that it becomes practically synonymous with mainstream economics. Yet he blames it for the specific sins of formalist economics more narrowly defined. And since he treats Austrian econornics as...

The principle that theories should be tested by the accuracy of their predictions but not by the realism of their assumptions needs to be qualified. As a practical matter we often need to evaluate the applicability of theories to cases for which they have not been tested by their predictions....

How can one tell whether academic research influences macroeconomic policy? One possibility is to look at government documents that set forth macro policy. This paper looks for such traces in U.S., European and Japanese documents. Because of ease of access it focuses on U.S. documents. Numerous...