Overturning Mundell: Fiscal Policy in a Monetary Union
研究货币联盟中财政政策的作用，发现当国家政府能实施财政干预且央行能承诺货币政策时，无论各国冲击相关性多低，货币联盟都能提高福利，推翻了蒙代尔关于低相关性下联盟不可取的结论。
Central to ongoing debates over the desirability of monetary unions is a supposed trade-off, outlined by Mundell (1961) : a monetary union reduces transactions costs but renders stabilization policy less effective. If shocks across countries are sufficiently correlated, then, according to this argument, delegating monetary policy to a single central bank is not very costly and a monetary union is desirable.This paper explores this argument in a setting with both monetary and fiscal policies. In an economy with monetary policy alone, we confirm the presence of the trade-off and find that indeed a monetary union will not be welfare improving if the correlation of national shocks is too low. However, fiscal interventions by national governments, combined with a central bank that has the ability to commit to monetary policy, overturn these results. In equilibrium, such a monetary union will be welfare improving for any correlation of shocks. Copyright 2004, Wiley-Blackwell.