Monetary Union Member Research Articles

Inflationary shocks and common economic trends: Implications for West African monetary union membership

This paper examines the inflation dynamics and common trends in the real gross domestic product (GDP) in the candidate countries of the embryonic West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ). Using fractional integration and cointegration methods, we establish that significant heterogeneity in behavior exists among the countries. Shocks to inflation in Sierra Leone are not mean-reverting; results for the Gambia and Ghana suggest some inflation persistence, despite being mean-reverting. Further, the cointegration results indicate the presence of only one common trend. With much attention currently being placed on convergence criteria and preparedness of the aspiring member states, less attention has been given to the extent to which the dynamics of inflation and economic trends in the individual countries are (dis)similar. We discuss some policy implications and highlight political implications.

Default Risk of Advanced Economies: An Empirical Analysis of Credit Default Swaps during the Financial Crisis*

Prices observed in the European sovereign credit default swap (CDS) market have se- verely increased since the beginning of the financial crisis. We document that the state of a countrys financial system and, since the beginning of the crisis, also the state of the world financial system have strong explanatory power for the behavior of CDS spreads, and the magnitude of this impact depends on the importance of a countrys financial system pre-crisis. Furthermore, Economic and Monetary Union member countries exhibit higher sensitivities to the health of the financial system. Our results suggest the presence of a private-to-public risk transfer through which market participants incorporate their expectations about financial industry bailouts.

An optimum currency area index for the EU10 countries

The purpose of this article is to identify, which of the new EU member countries is, in accordance with Optimum Currency Area (OCA) theory, appropriate candidate of the euro area membership. The author uses the OCA index to consider the suitability of monetary union membership. The OCA index is calculated for the EU10 countries and four selected traditional EU member states. The author concludes that, according to the OCA index, the Czech Republic is the best candidate for membership of the euro area. In the period 1999–2009, this amounted better value of the OCA index with the euro area than Austria and the Netherlands. Least suitable candidates are, according to the conclusions of the article, the Baltic countries.

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Currency Crisis Transmission through International Trade

The Eurozone recent crisis has shown how balance of payments problems in less developed European Monetary Union (EMU) member countries can affect EMU trading partners, spreading the crisis to a larger group of countries. This paper introduces a three-country dynamic general equilibrium model to analyze whether and how terms of trade effects can generate a spillover effect or a currency crisis transmission between countries. Specifically, using a two period model, it incorporates world market clearing conditions for tradables into a new theoretic model, analyzes net capital flow movements between countries, and establishes cross-border macroeconomic linkages. This paper shows how a currency crisis can transmit through the real (trade) sector channel; presents how changes in a foreign country's capital flow condition can influence home country's exchange rate through the change in terms of trade; mathematically proves that the significance of the real sector channel between two countries is positively associated with their trade levels; offers a new trade-related explanation for the occurrence of currency crises between countries; and describes how capital movement between two countries can lead to a currency crisis in one of these countries and in a third country.

The Effect of Openness in a Small Open Monetary Union

In this paper we build a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of a small open monetary union with optimal monetary and fiscal policy, to study the transmission of country specific shocks and associated exchange rate fluctuations. We show that movements of the monetary union’s exchange rate stabilize the output fluctuations inside the monetary union, reducing the need for fiscal stabilization. We also show that, under the optimal policy, fluctuations in the exchange rate and the union-wide aggregates are affected by the differences in the degree of nominal rigidities among the monetary union member countries.

The optimality of a gulf currency union: Commonalities and idiosyncrasies

A high degree of shared national elements that drive the bulk of observed output volatility between countries is generally seen as a necessary prerequisite for the formation of a successful monetary union. This is because countries in a monetary union accept a one-size-fits all, resigning regions to policies that are based on some aggregate macroeconomic target rather than a country-specific one. For this reason, the cost of monetary union membership depends on the incidence of asymmetric (nation-specific) shocks rather than symmetric, or common shocks. This criteria is examined for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, who reaffirmed plans for the implementation of a single currency. This paper quantifies, using structural factor models with common factor restrictions, changes in output synchronisation, the importance of common factor or idiosyncratic shocks between the regions, and the synchronisation of these shocks across the GCC as well as the implications for GCC-wide macroeconomic policy at short-to-medium term horizons. Despite current difficulties in fulfilling the convergence criteria goals to monetary union, the results show the synchronisation of output growth fluctuations between economies of the GCC to have increased over the past 25 years. This paper also finds that a fairly sizeable proportion of output fluctuations in business cycle frequencies are driven by a common component that, to some degree, reflects U.S. monetary policy and U.S. demand shocks as well as changes in crude oil prices.

Financial Frictions and Inflation Differentials in a Monetary Union

This paper presents a stylized New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for a monetary union to analyze whether cyclical inflation differentials can be explained by cross-country differences concerning the characteristics of financial markets. Our results suggest that empirically plausible degrees of heterogeneity with respect to two important credit market characteristics, i.e. the access to credit and the fraction of households holding debt, are a relevant source of inflation dispersion across European Monetary Union (EMU) member countries.

Fiscal reform and monetary union in West Africa

AbstractThis paper explores the interaction between the proposed monetary union for ECOWAS and structural reforms of fiscal policy. In a monetary union among symmetric countries members run a more distortionary fiscal policy and structural reform efforts fall. This can also follow in countries that adopt a unilateral peg or a foreign currency. In a monetary union with asymmetric countries reforms increase in countries that are relatively less distorted and the reverse happens in more distorted economies. Most West African Economic and Monetary Union members are thus likely to have a less distortionary fiscal policy after forming a monetary union with other ECOWAS members. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Monetary Union Membership in West Africa: A Cluster Analysis

Applying hard and soft clustering algorithms to a set of variables suggested by the convergence criteria and the theory of optimal currency areas, this paper examines the suitability of countries in the west African region to form the proposed monetary unions, the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Our analysis reveals considerable dissimilarities in the economic characteristics of member countries, particularly WAMZ countries. Furthermore, when west and central African countries are considered together, we find significant heterogeneities within the CFA franc zone, and some interesting similarities between the central African and WAMZ countries.

A new index of perceived inflation: Assumptions, method, and application to Germany

After the introduction of Euro notes and coins in January 2002, throughout the Economic and Monetary Union member countries a substantial discrepancy was evident between inflation as measured by the official consumer price indices (CPI) and that perceived by the general public. The starting point of this paper is the German case. First, the public controversy in Germany after the Euro changeover is sketched. Then conventional approaches to perceived inflation are reviewed including the many studies published by the German Federal Statistical Office as well as the perceived inflation balance generated within the EU Consumer Survey. In the main part of the paper, a novel approach to measuring perceived inflation is developed, the Index of Perceived Inflation (IPI). First, the hypotheses underlying this index are presented. Then, the IPI is derived. In the forth section the IPI is applied to the German data. The IPI time series for Germany from 1996 through 2005 shows a particularly high perceived inflation around the introduction of Euro notes and coins. In the fifth section the hypotheses of inflation perception underlying the IPI are critically reviewed. The paper closes with a conclusion on the insights gained through computation of the IPI.

Why separate monetary policy from banking supervision?

This paper provides a political-economy explanation for the separation of monetary policy from banking supervision by examining whether this institutional arrangement serves the platforms of the Conservative or of the Liberal parties, which are assumed to favor a stable price level and non-stable prices respectively. This paper shows this institutional design best serves the objectives of the Conservative party, provided the probability of banking crises is low. Thus this paper explains why European Monetary Union member states, which have led low-inflation policies since the mid-1980s, retained national Banking Authorities to supervise their banking systems when they created the European Central Bank. Journal of Comparative Economics 36 (3) (2008) 388–411.

Does one size fit all? A Taylor-rule based analysis of monetary policy for current and future EMU members

This article uses the Taylor rule to examine the appropriateness of European Central Bank (ECB) interest rate policy for the initial European Monetary Union (EMU) members and the 10 new EMU member states some of whom are expected to join the Eurozone in 2006–2007. Specifically it addresses three questions. (1) Are there differences between the interest rate aggregated from the Taylor interest rates of individual member states in the euro area and the interest rate set by the ECB? (2) For which countries do the desired interest rates according to the original Taylor rule and the interest rate of the euro area differ most and in which respect? (3) The last question is whether the interest rate gaps change over time. We find that the ECB's policy does not fit individual EMU members equally well and this result is unlikely to be changed with the addition of the 10 new members, which will have only a marginal effect on the ECB interest rate stance.

The Stress of Having a Single Monetary Policy in Europe

This paper estimates forward-looking Taylor rules for the euro area. Using the asymmetries in inflation and cyclical output developments across countries, we investigate the adequacy of the single monetary policy for each of the European Monetary Union (EMU) member countries. Notable differences emerge across the countries. Taking a euro area perspective, we also show that it depends upon the underlying country weighting scheme in the monetary decision process of the ECB whether or not there has been a synchronisation of business and inflation cycles among the EMU member countries over the years. Finally, we produce an estimate of the actual policy weights the ECB has implicitly attached to each of the member countries. Developments in small member countries have received more than proportional weights in actual monetary policy decisions of the ECB.

Practical insights from OCA variable combinations

This study aims to identify optimum currency areas (OCA) variables that distinguish certain Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) member countries from the other EMU members. In the previous studies, EMU members were identified in the light of criteria suggested by the OCA theory. In this study, in order to obtain additional insights, we analyzed OCA variables and the performance of European countries with respect to these variables. Our analysis shows that some of the EMU member countries are dissimilar to the rest of the EMU members with respect to certain OCA criteria.

Wage Flexibility in Spain: A Semiparametric Approach

Given the constraints imposed by European Monetary Union membership, flexibility in the labour market is crucial for countries and regions belonging to it. The paper addresses this issue empirically and analyses real wage flexibility in Spain over the 1985-1999 period. Previous studies have examined wage flexibility by means of parametric methods. However, this paper analyses it within the framework of a semiparametric panel data model. The results point to a high degree of wage rigidity in Spain, because national and regional wage setting are closely linked. However, semiparametric estimation allows us to find some signs of flexibility: first, regional wages respond to the evolution of regional unemployment rate when workers are more and more efficient; second, productivity increases at regional level have positive effects on wage growth, especially when regional unemployment rate is decreasing.

The Impact of Monetary Union on Macroeconomic Integration: Evidence from West Africa

Data from 19 African nations is used to investigate the hypothesis that monetary union—represented in this case by the CFA Franc Zone—augments the extent of macroeconomic integration. The paper covers two key dimensions of integration: the volume of bilateral trade, and the magnitude of cross‐country business cycle correlation. Restricting our attention to a part of the world in which (for historical reasons) monetary union membership is exogenous to economic characteristics, we can test whether the large single‐currency effects claimed by A. Rose apply within a sample of less developed countries.

Do EMU Members Share the Same Business Cycle?*

AbstractThe article analyses alternative approaches for dating the business cycles of a set of European monetary union (EMU) member states. First, the framework for analysing cyclical behaviour in economic activity is presented. Second, the dating algorithm is applied to both the classical cycle and the growth cycle in order to recover stylized facts of the business cycle in Europe. Third, the article utilizes different econometric techniques to evaluate the synchronicity of national cycles and the euro area aggregate cycle, and compare the results with that of the USA. A convergence analysis is also employed. Finally, a multivariate extension of the Hamilton‐Markov switching model is constructed to analyse the euro area business cycle. The results suggest that, although during the main recessionary periods the euro area economies shared a similar output dynamic, some differences still remain in the size and timing of the business cycle features. The results also suggest that adhesion to the new currency area is likely to lead to stronger synchronization of EMU members’ business cycles.

Effects of Economic Convergence on Stock Market Returns in Major EMU Member Countries

This study updates and extends existing literature by investigating the effects of economic convergence among major European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) member countries on stock market returns in each respective nation. Main findings include: (1) long-term stability in the EMU appears to be attainable, but further integration of product and factor markets is needed to reinforce convergence of real sectors; (2) the UK can be considered a quasi EMU participant due to convergence of its key economic variables with those of formal EMU members; and (3) economic convergence appears to be an important contributing factor to returns from stock markets in the included EMU countries except Germany.

Labour Market Flexibility and Policy Coordination in a Monetary Union

Sufficiently flexible labour markets are considered an important precondition for countries to benefit from membership in the monetary union. Economic policy coordination within the European Community is extensive and includes issues related to labour market structures. In this paper we study the determination of flexibility of the labour market and, ultimately, of wages in a member country of the monetary union. As a starting point, the analysis assumes that each country’s government, in formulating its labour market policy, decides the degree of nominal wage flexibility in light of the fact that this involves political costs that increase with the degree of wage flexibility. The study then focuses on the effects of monetary union membership on each country’s prospects for coordination of economic policies – specifically labour market policies. The study shows that coordination of labour market policies contributes to greater nominal wage flexibility in member countries. However, coordination of labour market policies will be effective only if unemployment is persistent or under discretionary monetary policy. From the perspective of macroeconomic stability, there is no particular need for coordinating labour market policies among member countries if the common central bank can credibly precommit to a low inflation target or if fluctuations in unemployment are white noise.