Although the worldwide growth in dollarization of bank deposits has recently slowed, it has already reached very high levels in dozens of countries. Building on earlier findings that allowed the main cross-country variations in the share of dollars to be explained in terms of national policies...

Conventional PPP-adjusted real output measures, invaluable for making international comparisons of living standards, may greatly exaggerate the productive capacity of poor countries. The equilibrium prices of an hypothetical world of full economic integration provide an instructive basis for...

Like all major currencies, the euro will attract a fringe of hangers-on. Though this need not influence overall policy with regard to the value of the euro, important policy questions arise. Can EMU members gain from cooperative arrangements for influencing or supporting fringe currencies? If...

There has been a resurgence of interest in currency boards as a possible approach to achieving a stable currency in newly established or hyperinflationary financial systems. This paper draws attention to one of the more successful currency board experiences, namely that of Ireland. We review the...

In our recent Economic Policy article (Honohan and Lane, 2003), we argued that the strength of the US dollar 1999-2001 had an important impact on inflation divergence within the EMU and in particular the surge in Ireland’s inflation to over 7%. This hypothesis has been subjected to a grueling...

Despite anchoring the Irish monetary system to a common zone-wide exchange rate and interest rate, EMU has triggered sizable exchange rate and especially interest rate shocks to the Irish economy (albeit not appreciably greater than those experienced under previous exchange rate regimes)....

This paper employs cohort technique and Consumer Expenditure Survey data to construct average age-profiles of consumption and income over the working lives of typical households across different education and occupation groups. Using these profiles, we estimate a structural model of optimal...

We offer a duality-based methodology for incorporating multi-sector effects of international trade into open economy macroeconomic models, developing the concepts of the dynamic factor price equalization set and the integrated intertemporal equilibrium. Under this approach, the aggregate...

The paper shows that the conversion from national currency bank notes to hard-ECU notes is promoted by the provision of an implicit and free currency call option. This wealth effect is caused by the devaluation-proof definition of this currency. Nevertheless, additional transactions and...

This paper is intended to make four main points that are relevant for previously planned economies in transition to a market economy. First, national output can be increased by reducing or eliminating relative price distortions through price reform and free trade and by thus enhancing...