The European Union currencies and the US dollar: from post-Bretton-Woods to the Euro

Abstract

In this paper we study the evolution of the US dollar real exchange rate vis-à-vis the European Union currencies in the floating post-Bretton-Woods era, both before and after the birth of the Euro. In the first period we find that most of the persistence shown by this rate is due to the movements of the US dollar during the mid-1980s. Once these effects are isolated, we can conclude that the US dollar real exchange rate exhibits stationarity with those currencies that are closely linked to the German Mark. However, when we include the observations covering the period during which the Euro was created, we cannot reject the unit root null hypothesis for any currency.