When the 1987 general elections brought a durable government to Portugal, the national environment was still inflationary. Nevertheless, thanks to the efforts of successive ministers of finance/central bank governor pairs, the criteria for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) were met and the...

Our focus in this paper is macroeconomic policy in the countries of Central Europe: The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. All four are committed to joining the European Union. Accordingly, their macroeconomic policies need to put them on a credible path towards meeting the entry...

The ineffectiveness of real devaluation as a stabilization policy does not imply that the nominal exchange rate should be held constant in the face of a domestic inflation. In this circumstance, import duties and export subsidies would have to be escalated to counter the potential erosion of the...