This paper develops a model of the circumstances under which it is beneficial to participate in a currency area. The proposed two-country monetary model of trade with nominal rigidities encompasses the real and monetary arguments suggested by the optimum currency area literature: correlation of...

About five decades the Franc CFA-Zone in Western and Central Africa was praised as incarnation of economic and political stability in Africa, backed by France. But free convertibility and fixed parity, guaranteed by the French Treasury, mainly served the interest of a small elite of the...

This paper investigates the circumstances under which it is beneficial to participate in a currency area. A two-country monetary model of trade with nominal rigidities encompasses the real and monetary arguments suggested by the optimum currency area literature: correlation of real shocks,...

This article examines the monetary arrangements between Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom from the 1820s to the 1930s. It is argued that the three countries formed a monetary union for most of this period. A new analysis of inland and London exchange rates demonstrates that the union...

ECU-denominated international bonds owed much of their limited success in the 1980s and 1990s to restrictions on the internationalisation of the Deutsche mark and to speculative investment, rather than simply to the benefits of diversification. Basket bond issuance may come at the cost of a less...

This paper will propose a plan to reform international finance – the World Financial Authority (WFA) Plan. Under such a plan, the IMF and other existing international financial institutions would be reformed and coordinated around a newly created WFA. The WFA would have two core functions....

In this paper we connect the events of the last twelve months, "The Panic of 2008" as it has been called, to the demand for international reserves. In previous work, we have shown that international reserve demand can be rationalized by a central bank's desire to backstop the broad money supply...

El estudio de las razones que conducen a una crisis monetaria o financiera continúa siendo una cuestión abierta. El objetivo de este trabajo es la búsqueda de nueva evidencia y ratificación de las razones que explican la génesis de las turbulencias sobre la peseta española. Basándonos en...

In this paper we estimate exchange market pressure (EMP) in four euro-candidate countries over the period 1995-2008. We apply model-dependent as well as modelindependent approach to the EMP estimation. Since all euro-candidates have to fulfil the exchange rate stability convergence criterion we...

The main conclusions of this paper are the following. In order to minimize switching costs, the name of the new EU currency should be the Deutschmark. Differential national requirements for seigniorage revenue provide a weak case for retaining national monetary independence. From the point of...