It is generally assumed that distance in the gravity model strictly reflects frictions impeding bilateral trade. However, distances North-South could also reflect differences in factor endowment that provide opportunities for profitable trade. This paper investigates the hypothesis that if we...

The discussion of monetary policy in France, which is intended for a chapter in a general handbook on monetary policy that will cover a number of other countries as well, begins with the early postwar period and carries the story up to the present. A separate section analyses the new framework...

Official adjustments of the budget balance to the cycle merely assume that the only category of government spending that responds automatically to the cycle is unemployment compensation. But estimates show otherwise. Payments for pensions, health, subsistence, invalidity, childcare and subsidies...

The emergence of a single interbank market for reserves in the EC following monetary union raises a basic dilemma for policy. Either competition is allowed to decide the location of the interbank market and the national central banks will enter the competition, or the location of this market is...

The tendency of a single world market to privilege the translation of English fiction and poetry into other languages for reading or listening enjoyment may damage the production of world literature and in this respect make us all worse off. In order to develop this thesis, the article begins...

This review article discusses the recent document titled `One Market, One Money' in which the European Commission develops its case for European monetary union. After examining the monetary issues, the article focuses on the reasons for the Commission's very worried attitude toward fiscal policy...

This paper explores the hypothesis that the non-German members of the European Monetary System (EMS) draw benefits from the system because of the monetary discipline that it imposes upon them. The hypothesis explains the dominant position of Germany in the EMS and is consistent with the evidence...

Do plans for a monetary union in Europe call for limits on the freedom of the member countries to use fiscal policy? To provide a tentative answer, we simulate the IMF model MULTIMOD, given various shocks, in the case of a European Monetary Union consisting only of France and Germany. The...

The paper develops two economic grounds for gradualism in the context of the Russian move towards a market economy: one for the support of output through subsidies, another for similar support through credit. The first argument relates to the usual case for softening the blow to a sector hit by...

The macroeconomic literature on automatic stabilization tends to focus on taxes and dismiss the relevance of government expenditure, aside from unemployment compensation. Our results go sharply contrary to this view. We engage in an empirical analysis of 20 OECD countries from 1980-2001 and find...