RELATIVE PURCHASING POWER PARITY AND THE EUROPEAN MONETARY UNION: EVIDENCE FROM EASTERN EUROPE

Abstract

ABSTRACT. This paper examine whether relative purchasing power parity holds for Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Romania and Turkey versus Germany over the period January 1999 to May 2013. We investigate the real exchange rate by using a Dickey-Fuller test. Thereafter, we investigate the real exchange rate by allowing for a trend with the origin in the Balassa-Samuelson effect. We also investigate the same pairs using the Engle-Granger cointegration test. However, for the Engle-Granger cointegration test, four of the pairs are excluded as the nominal exchange rate and the price differential are not integrated by the same order. We have investigated the half-life of each pair in each of the three approaches. We find ambiguous results both regarding relative PPP and the speed of adjustment towards the PPP equilibrium. We use the results to investigate whether the Albanian, Bulgarian, Croatian, FYR Macedonian, Romanian and Turkish economies are synchronized with the German economy and if they are ready to enter the European Monetary Union.JEL Classification: E5, E31 F33Keywords: Consumer Price Index, Monetary Policy, Monetary System, Currency Union, EMU, Exchange Rates, Economic Indicators(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionThere is today a wide discussion in Europe concerning which countries to include in the European Monetary Union (EMU) and how these countries (and the EMU itself) will benefit from a membership. Schadler, Drummon, Kuijs, Murgasova and Elkan (2005) argue that, for countries adopting the Euro, the trade-off is between gain in trade and growth and increased volatility as a result of losing the exchange rate as a shock absorber. Further they conclude that for central European countries (CEC), an adoption of the Euro will hasten real convergence and will at most suffer a modest increase in volatility. The basic question comes down to: when and how to adopt the Euro (Schadler, Drummond, Kuijs, Murgasova, & Elkan, 2005).One deterministic factor for the loss of increased volatility is the optimum currency area (OCA) criteria. The OCA captures the sensitiveness of a country's economy to real shocks that are asymmetric to those in the currency union. The OCA therefore measures how often the Euro-area monetary policy is likely to be different from the monetary policy necessary for the potential incoming country. In other words, the OCA measures whether the economic cycles in the Euro-area and the economic cycles in the potential EMU-client are synchronized. The OCA criteria also focus on how well the potential client can adopt to shocks without their own monetary policy (Schadler, Drummond, Kuijs, Murgasova, & Elkan, 2005).This paper discusses relative purchasing power parity (PPP) in some of the countries in the Balkan area versus Germany, which is the largest economy in the EMU. Findings that suggest that PPP holds do not automatically suggest that OCA criteria are fulfilled and that the economies are synchronized. However, positive finding in regards of PPP implies that the real exchange rates share common trends and are driven by economic fundamentals. Thus, positive findings of PPP suggest that the analyzed country is suitable to adopt the euro regarding the terms discussed above (Caporale, Ciferri, & Girardi, 2008). The countries examined in this paper are Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Romania and Turkey.Purchasing Power ParityPPP is the simple idea that arbitrage enforces national price levels to be equal after converted to the same currency (Rogoff, 1996). Rogoff (1996) writes that most economists believe that PPP is a long term anchor for real exchange rates; however, few take PPP seriously as a short term proposition. There are several variants of PPP.The Law of one PriceThe strictest version of PPP is the law of one price (LOP). The LOP states that after converting prices to one common currency, any good should have the same price across countries. …