European monetary unification seems to be one of the most important
events in international monetary affairs since the breakdown of Bretton
Woods. It pos es a major challenge to central banks, governments, and
labour unions. It opens up new fields of economic research that are both
intriguing and fascinating. European Monetary Union amounts to a switch
of regime. Surely the Mundell- Fleming model of the open economy does no
longer apply to Germany or France. The effects of shocks and policies on
output and prices should have changed dramatically in size. Some of them
should even work in the opposite direction now. The present book is part
of a larger research project on monetary union, see Carlberg (1999,
2000, 2001, 2002, 2003). Some parts of this project were presented at
the World Congress of the International Economic Association in Lisbon.
Other parts were presented at the Macro Study Group of the German
Economic Association, at the Annual Meeting of the Austrian Economic
Association in Klagenfurt, at the Pass au Workshop on International
Economics, at the Halle Workshop on Monetary Economics, and at the
Research Seminar on Macroeconomics in Freiburg. Moreover, book reviews
were published in the Economic Journal, Kyklos, the Journal of
Economics, and the Journal of Economics and Statistics.