Central bankers and many economists have abandoned activist policies and monetarism and adopted in their place a new view of the role of monetary policy. This view draws on many of the tenets of more traditional theories of money - monetarism's emphasis on inflation control and skepticism about...

This brief provides a detailed description of the Stability and Growth Pact, an agreement entered into by the member states of the European Union that has far-reaching implications for the long-run value of the euro, and therefore, on the real economy in terms of output growth and employment....

This paper appraises the current position of the European Union (EU) countries, which could potentially become members of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) which is now likely to materialise in January, 1999, in an attempt to argue that the current EMU criteria should be revised. The paper...

This paper seeks to evaluate the strength of the case for a financial transactions tax, judged against the three rationales which have been proposed for such a tax: the excessive volume of short-term foreign exchange transactions and their effects on exchange rate volatility; the revenue-raising...

This paper reconsiders the case for the use of fiscal policy based on a "functional finance" approach that advocates the use of fiscal policy to secure high levels of demand in the context of private aggregate demand, which would otherwise be too low. This "functional finance" view means that...

Recent developments in macroeconomic policy, in terms of both theory and practice, have elevated monetary policy while downgrading fiscal policy. Monetary policy has focused on the setting of interest rates as the key policy instrument, along with the adoption of inflation targets and the use of...

This paper is concerned with two issues. First, it discusses some of the main problems and inferences the methodological approach of critical realism raises for empirical work in economics, while considering an approach adopted to try to overcome these problems. Second, it provides a concrete...

This paper explores some of the links between macroeconomic policy and industrial strategy. The perspective of the present paper is to emphasis the role of the output and investment activities of enterprises rather than the general focus on the labour market in the determination of economic...

This paper examines the causes of the general decline in the value of the euro by assessing the various explanations proffered in existing literature, then offering a more satisfactory explanation. The argument prevalent in the literatureCthat the decline in value of the euro is due to AU.S....

It has been argued that the eurozone will face considerable economic difficulties. These will take a number of forms, two of which could qualify as "crises." First, the euro was launched at a time when unemployment levels were high (10 percent of the workforce) and disparities in the experience...