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.