Abstract:
This essay is based on the 1997-98 Frank D. Graham Memorial Lecture, which I had the honor of presenting at Princeton University on April 9, 1998. Frank Graham was deeply concerned with the interplay among national policy sovereignty, exchange-rate regimes, and price-level stability. Today, the world offers an embarrassingly rich diversity of national and regional arenas in which domestic political realities and the desire for exchange-rate stability have come - or threaten to come - into conflict. Europe, where a new common curency, the euro, is to be launched on January 1, 1999, will not be exempt from this tension in the foreseeable future.