While economic theory highlights the usefulness of flexible exchange rates in promoting adjustment in international relative prices, flexible exchange rates also can be a source of destabilizing shocks. We find that when countries joining the euro currency union abandoned their national exchange...

A European Monetary Union (EMU) and the complete transfer of the responsibility for monetary policy to a European central bank are no longer utopian ideas, but a politically highly relevant possibility. The question how economic policy goals can be achieved within such a monetary union is...