The identification of an European business cycle has been inconclusive. Yet cyclical convergence is the key consideration for those countries that wish to be members of the currency union (e.g. UK). In general, countries will vary in the components and characteristics that make up their cycles...

Monetary and fiscal policies interact in many ways. Recently, the stance of fiscal policy in a number of countries (including the EU and the US) has raised concerns about risks for the outcomes of monetary policy. Our paper first shows that these concerns are justified since - under an ambitious...

This paper generalizes and qualifies an influential monetary policy result due to Rogoff (1985) by taking fiscal policy, and fiscal-monetary interactions, into account. It shows that an appointment of a conservative central banker may, under a range of circum- stances, (i) increase the average...

DEMERTZIS M. and HUGHES HALLETT A. (1996) Regional inequalities and the business cycle: an explanation of the rise in European unemployment, Reg. Studies 30, 15-29. The introduction of a system of fixed exchange rates in Europe has succeeded in inducing price convergence amongst its...

Using a conventional model, this paper examines the conditions under which it is possible to stabilise both the output (inflation) cycle and the budget deficit/surplus of a regional economy in a wider currency union. We find that it is never possible. But we can approximate that result (for...

This article studies the impact of alternative institutional configurations on economic performance when there is strategic interaction between the government and the central bank. The interaction between the fiscal and monetary authorities is modeled as a non-cooperative two-stage game. The...