Currencies play an important role in facilitating trade and economic growth. Shifts in currency values may lead to economic dislocations hindering trade and growth. Most currencies are issued by government central banks. These central banks hold assets in the form of government debt and gold...

The paper aims to critically examine the problems of public debt in Italy under the criteria of the Maastricht Treaty and subsequent decisions by Europe in tax matters. On this issue, the paper shows Italy's efforts in the direction of the Maastricht criteria, but also highlights the problems to...

The objective of this paper is to analyze, with the instruments of Game Theory, the incentives that can lead a Member State of the European Union to disregard the Stability and Growth Pact, and thus, to keep an excessive deficit, although aware of the political and financial risk associated with...

The international economic literature makes primarily China responsible for the evolution of a global disequilibrium. According to this view, China's current account surplus and the growth of the resulting Chinese official exchange reserves to almost two thousand billion dollars were rendered...

The long-term declining role of manufacturing in the U.S. economy – reflecting a shift of the economy after World War II to a post-industrial orientation with an increased emphasis on services – was accelerated by the effects on manufacturing jobs and trade deficits of President Reagan's...

Debates over economic policy tend to be enormously confused. It is often the case that even high-level officials and well-known economists seem ignorant of basic accounting identities. This leads them to make claims that literally do not add up. This seems to be especially common in the case of...

If the U.S. trade deficit remains around its present level for a few more years it will generate an exploding growth in overseas indebtedness which will imperatively demand correction at some stage. The longer the correction is postponed, the more intractable the problem will become both for the...

In part I of this paper, we have presented a general treatment of the welfare effect of an eastern EU enlargement on incumbent countries. Part II now takes a closer look at the Austrian case. We first present a few descriptive statistics on the role that east-west trade, as well as the pertinent...