Monetary Policy at the European Periphery Greek Experience and Lessons for EU Candidates

Introduction.- The EMU Ins and the EMU Outs: Maastricht and beyond.- Introduction; On the feasibility of EMU in Europe; The Ins group and the Outs group; Monetary policy after 1999; Summary and concluding remarks; Greece and the European Monetary Union: a bottle half-empty or half-full?.- Introduction; The Greek economy: past performance and current position; Costs and benefits from EMU membership; The Greek Convergence Programmes: a deficit of credibility; What strategy for Greece?.- Monetary Developments in Greece: 1975-97.- A brief account of monetary events; The process of financial liberalization; Money and credit aggregates; Interest rates; Exchange rates; Recent Greek monetary policies.- Introduction; Some preliminaries; Recent monetary strategies in Greece; From intermediate targets to formal inflation targets in Greece.- Introduction; Inflation-targeting: theory and international evidence; Inflation in Greece; Main features and operation of an inflation-targeting regime in Greece; An independent Bank of Greece: an idea whose time has come.- Introduction; Central bank independence: a brief review of theories; The Bank of Greece: past experience and current regime; How independent should the Bank of Greece be?; Independence and other associated functions of the Bank of Greece; An independent and accountable Bank of Greece; Summary and Lessons for EU candidates.