This paper explores under what conditions a European Monetary Union (EMU) is an optimum currency area. The scope for an EMU increases with convergence of structural and fiscal policies, small money holdings, a conservative European Central Bank, and dependent national central banks. How national...

We show that, with benevolent policymakers and fiscal leadership, monetary unification reduces inflation, taxes and public spending. These disciplining effects of a monetary union, which rise with the number of fiscal players in the union, are likely to raise welfare. Joining an optimally...

In exploring the impact of tax policy on labor-market performance, the paper first investigates how tax reform impacts labor supply and equilibrium unemployment in representative agent models.The impact of tax policy on labor market performance depends importantly on various other labor-market...

Many pollution-related industries wield strong political influence and can e.ectively veto policy initiatives that would harm their profits.A politically realistic approach to environmental policy therefore seems to require the alleviation of significant profitlosses to these industries.The...

This paper explores how the costs of meeting given aggregate targets for pollution emissions change with the imposition of the requirement that key pollution-related industries be compensated for potential losses of profit from the pollution regulation.Using analytically and numerically solved...

This paper explores the optimal risk sharing arrangement between generations in an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth.We allow for nonseparable preferences, paying particular attention to the risk aversion of the old as well as overall "life-cycle" risk aversion.We provide a...