Recent proposals for enlarging the European Community to include the EFTA countries raise the question of whether the new members should participate in a European Monetary Union. In part, the issue hinges on the incidence of aggregate supply and demand disturbances. We use data on prices and...

This paper looks at theoretical and empirical issues associated with the operation of fiscal stabilizers within an economy. It argues that such stabilizers operate most effectively at a national, rather than local, level. As differing cycles across regions tend to offset each other for the...

A broad set of possible determinants of private saving behavior is examined, using data for a large sample of industrial and developing countries. Both time-series and cross-section estimates are obtained. Results suggest that there is a partial offset on private saving of changes in public...

The paper presents estimates of a model of the credibility of the U.K. commitment to its central parity against the deutsch mark during the period of ERM membership (1990-92). The measure of credibility used is the long term, interest differential with Germany. Credibility is decomposed into two...

This paper presents evidence supporting the existence of a stable money demand relationship for Germany plus a core group of countries--France, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg--that have not realigned their parities against the deutsche mark since at least 1987. The predictive power of the core-ERM...

This paper considers gains from international economic policy coordination when there is uncertainty concerning the functioning of the world economy, but also learning about the "true" model on the part of policymakers. The paper reports estimates of plausible alternative versions of a standard...

A model emphasizing the tradeoff between the costs of changes of domestic interest rates and exchange rate stability is used to assess the role of credibility and reputational factors in the lead-up to the December 1994 crisis of the Mexican peso. Devaluation expectations are decomposed into the...