This paper reviews the problems that must be resolved at the Intergovernmental Conference in 1996 to clear the way for European Monetary Union: locking in Germany's commitment to the project, and reconciling EMU with variable geometry. It reviews what we know about the costs and benefits of EMU...

We develop a model of monetary and fiscal policies appropriate for considering U.S.-European policy interactions in an era of near-balanced budgets and European monetary union. We study the determinants of policy trade-offs and incentives for central banks and governments across the Atlantic....

This paper studies the impact of changes in the extent to which fiscal policy is distortionary on the short-run macroeconomic tradeoffs facing fiscal policymakers in an era of budget equilibrium. It does so in an open economy framework, that we use to interpret U.S.-European policy interactions....