A country's suitability for entry into a currency union depends on a number of economic conditions. These include, inter alia, the intensity of trade with other potential members of the currency union, and the extent to which domestic business cycles are correlated with those of the other...

This paper addresses the issue of whether regimes of fixed exchange rates are a mechanism for shifting volatility inter-temporally. Using a panel of data covering twenty industrialized countries from 1959 through 1993, I examine the volatilities of a host of real and monetary variables....

Regressions of ex post changes in floating exchange rates on appropriate interest differentials typically imply that the high-interest rate currency tends to appreciate, the 'forward discount puzzle.' Using data from the European Monetary System (EMS), the authors find that a large part of the...