NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2004

The NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics brings together leading American and European economists to discuss a broad range of current issues in global macroeconomics. An international companion to the more American-focused NBER Macroeconomics Annual, this particular volume offers cutting-edge research on monetary and fiscal policy responses to macroeconomic fluctuations, with special emphasis on tailoring a single monetary policy for the diverse economies that make up the European Monetary Union. The individual papers examine such topics as whether rule-based monetary policy should target price levels or inflation rates; how much cyclical correlation across countries can be attributed to transmission between multinational companies and their international affiliates; the different effects of monetary policy in high-debt and low-debt countries; and the prospects for the ten 2004 entrants to the European Union, based on the experiences of EU entrants of the 1980s.