In the first chapter, I examine an incomplete markets economy in a politico-economic general equilibrium setting in which the median voter chooses the inflation rate. I use an environment where individuals face an uninsurable idiosyncratic labor productivity shock, and money is the only asset. Being an effective tax on savings, inflation acts as a redistribution mechanism transferring resources from the rich to the poor. I show that the median voter chooses a positive inflation rate as the politico-economic equilibrium outcome. In the second chapter, I analyze how forming a monetary union affects consumption and earnings inequalities through monetary policy changes implied by adopting a common currency. I use a two country open-economy, overlapping-generations model with heterogenous individuals to investigate these effects. In the model, inflation tax is the only redistributive tool and consumption and earnings inequalities are decreasing functions of inflation. When forming a monetary union, countries face a trade-off between the undesirable distributional effects of losing their monetary autonomy and benefits from the elimination of trade frictions. Findings suggest that when countries choose to do so, the country with higher initial inflation will definitely experience a fall in its inflation, hence an increase in its inequalities. In the country with lower initial inflation, however, inflation and inequalities might go in either direction depending on the degree of heterogeneity and the trade dependency between the countries. As the inflationary effect of uniting its monetary policy with a high inflation country can dominate the reducing effect of vanished trade frictions on inflation, this country might have an increase in its inflation, and a decrease in its inequalities. Finally, in the third chapter, I compare the indirect measure of inflation expectations derived by Ireland (1996b) to the direct measures obtained from expectations surveys in two case studies: the US and Turkey. Our results show that the inflation bounds calculated for US data are more volatile than survey results, and are too narrow to contain them due to low standard errors in consumption growth series stemming from high persistence. For the Turkish case, on the other hand, out of three different surveys on inflation expectations in Turkey compared with the bounds computed using Turkish data, expectations obtained by the Consumer Tendency Survey fall within these bounds throughout the whole sample period. Moreover we show that, as Fisher's theory suggests, real interest rates are extremely volatile in Turkey and movements in nominal interest rates cannot be directly used as an indicator of changes in inflation expectations. / text

本文首先討論權力平衡與政治均衡的差異。以Waltz為代表的新現實主義是力學式、演繹邏輯的國際觀；而Schroeder的政治均衡則是生物學式、整體式、歸納的國際觀。權力平衡與政治均衡構成本文的分析架構。本文採歷史研究法，以愛爾蘭為例，說明愛爾蘭在受到「國家」、「人」、「國際體系」的影響後，放棄抗衡的策略後，均衡的國際觀才為愛爾蘭帶來和平與繁榮。 愛爾蘭自十二世紀起成為英國的殖民地，累積八個世紀的恩怨情仇在二十世紀初爆發。愛爾蘭政治家de Valera採用抗衡式的經濟外交策略，即使愛爾蘭成為歐洲的乞丐也在所不惜。1959年接手主政的Lemass對國家利益則有完全不同的見解。取消閉關自守的經貿政策、大膽與英國簽訂英愛自由貿易協定，促使愛爾蘭在1973年順利加入歐洲共同體，開啟了塞爾特之虎的序幕。 文末則是回到兩岸關係的探討。台灣與愛爾蘭相似點在於，同屬小國且也同樣面對同文同種的強敵威脅。台灣或可以愛爾蘭為鏡，走出成功的小國國際政治。