The three exchange rate regimes adopted by Italy from 1883 up to the eve of World War I - the gold standard (1883-1893), floating rates (1894-1902), and “gold shadowing” (1903-1911) - produced a puzzling result: formal adherence to the gold standard ended in failure while shadowing the gold...

Since the mid-1990s new developments in the theory of optimum currency areashave set forth an equilibrium approach that, in contrast with the traditional viewstemming from Robert Mundell's seminal paper, considers the optimality criteria as the product of equilibrium forces and therefore...

Monetary theory not only provides the tools to analyse monetary arrangements, it also shapes them in an essential way. The selected papers gathered together in this book deal with a variety of topics concerning both aspects of this twofold relationship. A number of controversial issues regarding...