Two approaches to the theory of OCA are distinguished in this paper. The first attempts to define the OCA from the point of view of a single country, and the second examines the optimality of a currency area of a given size anf membership. The present paper after reviewing the drawbacks of the...

Measured against PPP, the drachma effective exchange rate was overvalued by a significant amount, implying that the devaluation on March 1998 was an adjustment of the exchange rate towards the long-run price differentials. The paper also analyses the links between fiscal policy, interest rates...

The unemployment rate in Greece rose from a mere 2.2% in the 1970s to 6.4% in the 1980s and 10% approximately in the mid-1990s. Currently, it gravitates around that level. In this paper we present the stylized facts of unemployment in Greece and examine the causes of its abrupt increse in the...

The unemployment rate in Greece rose from a mere 2.2% in the 1970s to 6.4% in the 1980s and 10% approximately in the mid-1990s. Currently, it gravitates around that level. In this paper we present the stylized facts of unemployment in Greece and examine the causes of its abrupt increse in the...

Measured against PPP, the drachma effective exchange rate was overvalued by a significant amount, implying that the devaluation on March 1998 was an adjustment of the exchange rate towards the long-run price differentials. The paper also analyses the links between fiscal policy, interest rates...

This paper considers the efficiency and distributional effects of partial shifts away from the destination principle where, as in the case of the European VAT, only trade by some traders is charged at the origin country's tax rate, while trade by others bears the destination country's tax rate.

A model of optimal car replacement is developed and used to examine the impact of alternative policy measures on the optimal car replacement time and on total emissions of pollutants, when environment policy takes the form of: (i) reduced taxes on purchaso of "clean" cars, (ii) administrative...

In this paper we examine the past performance of the Greek economy in some detail, and we try to provide a few answers to the question of why growth slowed so dramatically.

The Envelope Theorem is shown to involve comparaisons between the performance of the optimal policy and that of alternative policies, which satisfy the constraints of the problem and may also have other features.

This paper provides a unifying framework in which identified offset and sterilisation equations can be derived and estimated. The theoretical model suggests that, in the case where the central bank cares about bouth external and internal goals and capital is less than perfectly mobile, there...