Editorial
On April 15–16, 2002 a conference on “Monetary Union: Theory, EMU Experience, and Prospects for Latin America” was held at the University of Vienna. It was jointly organized by Eduard Hochreiter (OeNB), Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Banco Central de Chile) and Georg Winckler (Universität Wien). Academic economists and central bank researchers presented and discussed current research on the optimal design of a monetary union in the light of economic theory and EMU experience and assessed the prospects of monetary union in Latin America. A number of papers presented at this conference are being made available to a broader audience in the Working Paper series of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and in the Central Bank of Chile Working Paper series. This volume contains the first of these papers. In addition to the paper by Sylvester Eijffinger the Working Paper also contains the contributions of the designated discussants José Luis Malo de Molina and Franz Seitz.