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The first article in this Bulletin reports the proceedings of a major
international workshop on the empirical modelling of macroeconomic
interactions between North and South. This Bulletin also contains
reports of workshops on the European Community's external trade and on
European financial and monetary integration, and of lunchtime meetings
on German unification, the environmental impact of economic reform in
Eastern Europe and the implications of innovation for UK trade
performance. On 29/31 October, participants from a wide variety of developed and developing countries took part in the second workshop on the modelling of `North-South Macroeconomic Interactions', which was jointly organized by CEPR with the Brookings Institution and PUC- Rio. European Integration At a CEPR/EFTA policy seminar held in Geneva on 6 October, Carl Hamilton and Victor Norman presented the results of their recent research into the effects of the European Community's `1992' programme on external trade. Financial Markets The fourth workshop of the European Science Foundation Network in Financial Markets, on `Options and Futures', took place in Madrid on 26/27 October, hosted by the Banco de España. Monetary Union Participants in a December meeting on Financial and Monetary Integration in Europe, hosted by the Banco de España, focused on the implications of progress towards European monetary union for fiscal policy and the problems of transition. International Trade Participants in CEPR's second workshop on `The Consequences of 1992 for International Trade' presented the results of recent empirical modelling of the prospects for the European Community's external trade. German Unification At a lunchtime meeting on 16 November, Michael Burda assessed the real and monetary effects of German economic and monetary union. Eastern Europe At a lunchtime meeting on 26 November, Gordon Hughes argued that levels of pollution in Eastern Europe have generally been exaggerated, and also that they will fall as a natural consequence of the current process of economic reform, without the need for specific environmental regulation. UK Trade Performance At a lunchtime meeting on 10 December, Christine Greenhalgh noted the major divergences among manufacturing and traded services sectors in the measurable contributions of innovation to the UK's trade performance over time. Discussion Papers Daniel Cohen analyses proposals to reduce the face value of LDC debt and assesses its relationship to investment and growth. He and Thierry Verdier argue that `secret' buy-backs of debt may help to overcome the free-rider problem that otherwise prevents banks from reaching efficient agreement with debtors. Fiorella Padoa Schioppa argues that a public retirement pension scheme based on a pay-as-you-go mechanism will lead to perverse income redistributions in favour of the better off. Rudiger Dornbusch and Holger Wolf assess the relevance of the post-war European experience of monetary reforms for Eastern Europe today. Marcus Miller and Alan Sutherland compare the UK's return to the gold standard in 1925 with its entry into the ERM of the EMS in late 1990. Paul de Grauwe and Hans Dewachter present a synthesis of the `news' model of exchange rate behaviour and the popular view that rates are driven by speculative dynamics. Hugo Keuzenkamp and Frederick van der Ploeg argue that Dutch economic performance over the 1980s would have been improved if the government had sustained its current account with borrowing from abroad. George Alogoskoufis and Nicos Christodoulakis assess the costs and benefits of alternative means of stabilizing Greek public and external debt. George Alogoskoufis and Chris Martin argue that differences in macroeconomic policy responses explain differences in open-economy unemployment just as well as more traditional `institutional' theories of labour markets. Alberto Alesina and Nouriel Roubini find that `rational partisan' models of the political business cycle represent better those countries with clear changes of government from left to right than those with coalition governments. Richard Baldwin and Richard Lyons argue that self-fulfilling `optimistic' expectations may play a major role in the progress towards European economic and monetary integration. David Currie, Paul Levine and Joseph Pearlman present evidence that EMU will improve on a strengthened EMS in terms of its anti- inflationary properties only when the proposed Eurofed has acquired a firm reputation. Mark Taylor applies new econometric techniques to reassess Cagan's `hyperinflation' model of money demand. Alexis Jacquemin and André Sapir compare the actual and potential effects of external and internal competition for a variety of EC industries in the run-up to `1992'. Carl Hamilton assesses the impact of the forthcoming abolition of intra-EC barriers to trade in imports of clothing from Pacific Asia. Orazio Attanasio and Guglielmo Weber argue that micro data provide a better measure than aggregate data of the intertemporal substitutability of consumption. José Viñals argues that the removal of remaining Spanish capital controls will reduce the apparent effectiveness of domestic monetary policy but will improve that of fiscal policy. Barry Eichengreen argues that fiscal federalism as practiced in the US would be beneficial to a European currency union. |
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