The European Council selects the EMU participants by a vote with a qualified majority. These voting requirements influence the benefit-cost-considerations of the EU states and may make it necessary to loosen the convergence criteria and/or to grant side payments, in order to achieve the...

European Union (EU) accession countries have strong incentives to stabilize their exchange rates with respect to the euro as the nominal anchor. We present a microstructure model of the foreign exchange market based on technical trading that allows us to categorize the de facto exchange rate...

The paper discusses the stabilizing potential of fiscal policy in a dynamic general-equilibrium model of monetary union. We consider a small open economy inside the currency area. We analyze the demand and supply effects of direct taxation, indirect taxation and government spending and derive...

In case of speculative attacks, the central banks' decisions to intervene or not to intervene seem to play an important role for the economic costs of currency crises. The central bank can either abstain from intervening or start an intervention, which in turn can be successful or unsuccessful....