This paper examines capital tax competition in the presence of an interstate transfer policy without federal commitment. Lack of commitment implies that tax policy is chosen prior to federal transfers. The paper's main result is that ex-post federal policy internalizes horizontal fiscal...

The main tasks of central banks are to secure price and financial stability. These objectives can, in times of crises, conflict with one another, and the central bank may have to renounce one of them in order to secure the other. In a monetary union, this trade-off can be exacerbated by the...

The creation of Monetary Union in Europe has specified a centralised role for the monetary instrument but has left the fiscal instrument within the nations' jurisdiction. It remains unclear how national fiscal policies will interact with the common monetary policy and whether there will be...

This paper considers a simple stochastic model of international trade with three countries. Two of the tree countries are in an economic union. Comparisons are made between equilibrium welfare for these two countries under fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes. Within the model it is shown...

In this paper we first review the available literature on the degree of insurance against shocks, provided by the central budget in the federal systems already existing. Next, we discuss the main points raised on the debate about the implementation of an automatic mechanism designed to cope with...

Could a West African monetary union (either of the non-CFA countries, or all ECOWAS members) be an effective "agency of restraint" on fiscal policies? We discuss how monetary union could affect fiscal discipline and the arguments for explicit fiscal restraints considered in the European Monetary...

This paper considers a simple stochastic model of international trade with three countries. Two of the tree countries are in an economic union. Comparisons are made between equilibrium welfare for these two countries under fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes. Within the model it is shown...

The policy response to the current European crisis has largely focused on its financial symptoms rather than on its deep economic and political causes. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate about the current architecture of the European Economic and Monetary Union. The crisis has...

This paper addresses arguments that a system of fiscal insurance between member states of the European Union is needed to act in replacement of nominal exchange rate flexibility as an automatic stabilizer under monetary union. Many authors have argued or assumed that asymmetric real...