The Paper draws its motivation from the observation that, three years into the single currency, EMU financial markets are making only slow progress towards integration and from the belief that economic history can offer useful insight as to the causes of the phenomenon. In this vein, we...

Does a monetary union need fiscal shock absorbers helping the participating countries to cope with asymmetric shocks? The consensus in the debate over EMU argues that the answer is yes. In this paper, we revisit the issue, building on a dynamic, general equilibrium framework of regions in a...

The combination of discretionary monetary policy, labour-market distortions and nominal wage rigidity yields an inflation bias as monetary policy tries to exploit nominal wage contracts to address labour-market distortions. Although an inflation target eliminates this inflation bias, it creates...

The authors provide some evidence consistent with a heterogeneous credit channel of monetary policy transmission in the European Union. Using the techniques of cointegration and Error Correction Models, the authors have shown that the external finance premium is one important leading indicator...

The Maastricht Treaty provided the blueprint for achieving Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as a further stage in the process of political and economic integration of the European Union (EU). In order to qualify to participate in EMU, Member States were required to achieve a high degree of...

Article 106 (ex 105 a) of the Treaty establishing the European Community maintains the historical tradition separating the issue of banknotes, for which the Central Bank is competent, and the issue of coins, which is the responsibility of the finance ministries. It is therefore for the European...

At the end of the first half of the transitional period, this communication privides an overview of the preparations undertaken so fare and those required for the final changeover to the euro at the beginning of 2002. Two events are associated with the end of the transitional period: as from 1...

The aim of this paper is to design the optimal institutional arrangement for a monetary union. Using a two-country rational expectations model, the study analyses how the conservatism of the area-wide central bank and the penalty system for fiscal deviation (Stability and Growth Pact) should be...

This paper presents an analysis of the growth and structure of EU-CEE intra-industry trade since the latter commenced their economic transition in the late 1980's. Section 2 outlines the economic rationale for intra-industry trade and its classification into horizontal and vertical two-way...

If actual unemployment affects the NAIRU through a hysterisis effect, the disinflation involved in reducing a country's inflation rate to that of its future partners in a monetary union could produce a long term cost to monetary union in the form of a lasting rise in the NAIRU. This note sets...