Interpreting The Erm Crisis

This study interprets key aspects of the ERM crisis and presents a model of an integrated EU economy?including both country-specific macroeconomic conditions and global shocks?that focuses on the systemic forces linking the revision of market expectations and the asymmetric policy responses as different dimensions of the same equilibrium outcome. It analyzes the implications of changes in the degree and modalities of policy coordination on the equilibrium exchange-rate parities in Europe and shows how the traditional theory of currency crises can be generalized in a multicountry framework, in which the "fundamentals" are augmented so as to include the rules regulating coordination (or competition) among policymakers.