The transition to monetary union
In: Occasional paper / Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2
In: Occasional paper / Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2
World Affairs Online
In: Scottish journal of political economy: the journal of the Scottish Economic Society, Band 24, Heft 1, S. 87-95
ISSN: 1467-9485
In: International studies perspectives: ISP, Band 4, Heft 3, S. 275-292
ISSN: 1528-3585
In: Common Market Law Review, Band 26, Heft 2, S. 301-326
ISSN: 0165-0750
In: Discussion paper series 719
In: Monitoring European Integration, 1991
In: A CEPR Annual Report
World Affairs Online
In: Current history: a journal of contemporary world affairs, Band 98, Heft 627, S. 171-175
ISSN: 1944-785X
In: Swiss political science review: SPSR = Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft : SZPW = Revue suisse de science politique : RSSP, Band 18, Heft 4, S. 508-513
ISSN: 1662-6370
In: Discussion Papers of the Jean Monnet Group of Experts, 5
In: Discussion Papers of the Jean Monnet Group of Experts
World Affairs Online
Abstract The euro area consists of several small open, fairly heterogeneous economies. The establishment of this common currency area greatly changed the macroeconomic interdependency between its member countries. This thesis examines the fundamental macroeconomic linkages and spillover effects between the monetary union member countries with the focus on the phenomena associated with the countries' openness to international trade. This doctoral thesis consists of three essays. The first essay examines the impact of the implementation of a monetary union on international economic fluctuations. The essay finds that the implementation reverses the expenditure-switching effects between goods produced inside the monetary union, and helps to stabilize economic fluctuations. The second essay examines the effects of openness to international trade on a small monetary union. The essay shows howmovements in the monetary union's exchange rate stabilize output fluctuations inside the monetary union and reduce the need for fiscal stabilization. The third essay argues that, under a non-coordinated optimal fiscal policy, government spending should focus on the stabilization of a local output gap and inflation, while union-wide aggregate fluctuations should be stabilized by a common independent monetary policy. The essay also shows how a suboptimal monetary policy increases the spillover effects of countryspecific shocks. ; Tiivistelmä Tässä väitöskirjassa tutkitaan rahaliiton maiden välisiä makrotaloudellisia riippuvuussuhteita. Tutkimuksessa keskitytään erityisesti kansainvälisen kaupan ilmiöihin. Väitöskirja koostuu kolmesta erillisestä esseestä. Ensimmäisessä esseessä käsitellään rahaliiton perustamisen vaikutuksia kansainvälisen talouden dynamiikkaan. Tulosten mukaan rahaliiton perustaminen muuttaa vaihtosuhteen dynamiikkaa rahaliiton sisällä. Lisäksi rahaliiton muodostaminen vaimentaa jäsenmaiden makrotaloudellisia heilahteluita. Toisessa esseessä tutkitaan kansainvälisen kaupan merkitystä pienen rahaliiton tapauksessa. Havaitaan, että yhteisvaluutan kurssimuutokset tasapainottavat rahaliiton sisäisiä reaalitalouden muutoksia ja vähentävät tarvetta tasapainottaa taloutta finanssipolitiikan avulla. Kolmannessa esseessä osoitetaan, että rahaliiton jäsenvaltioiden harjoittaman itsenäisen finanssipolitiikan tulisi keskittyä kotimaisen inflaation ja tuotannon tasapainottamiseen. Yhteisen rahapolitiikan tulisi puolestaan tasapainottaa rahaliiton keskimääräisiä muutoksia. Tulosten mukaan epäoptimaalinen rahapolitiikka voimistaa maakohtaisten reaalitaloudellisten muutosten välittymistä muihin rahaliiton maihin.
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Europe's financial crisis cannot be blamed on the Euro, Harold James contends in this probing exploration of the whys, whens, whos, and what-ifs of European monetary union. The current crisis goes deeper, to a series of problems that were debated but not resolved at the time of the Euro's invention. Since the 1960s, Europeans had been looking for a way to address two conundrums simultaneously: the dollar's privileged position in the international monetary system, and Germany's persistent current account surpluses in Europe. The Euro was created under a politically independent central bank to meet the primary goal of price stability. But while the monetary side of union was clearly conceived, other prerequisites of stability were beyond the reach of technocratic central bankers. Issues such as fiscal rules and Europe-wide banking supervision and regulation were thoroughly discussed during planning in the late 1980s and 1990s, but remained in the hands of member states. That omission proved to be a cause of crisis decades later. Here is an account that helps readers understand the European monetary crisis in depth, by tracing behind-the-scenes negotiations using an array of sources unavailable until now, notably from the European Community's Committee of Central Bank Governors and the Delors Committee of 1988-89, which set out the plan for how Europe could reach its goal of monetary union. As this foundational study makes clear, it was the constant friction between politicians and technocrats that shaped the Euro. And, Euro or no Euro, this clash will continue into the future.
In: Untersuchungen zur Wirtschaftspolitik 135
Introduction: European enlargement generally refers to the inclusion of new states into the European Union's Treaty area. This article considers instead the enlargement of Economic and Monetary Union into Africa. We know that no part of Africa is in the EU, though Morocco has sought to join, and the island of Mayotte belongs to an EU member state (France) and uses the euro. But the EU's single currency area is not identical with its monetary area. This article is about EMU beyond the EU itself, and in particular about the monetary shadow European colonial history has cast over western and central Africa. Here as well as in the Comoros islands three local currencies were long in the monetary area of France, and are now but local expressions of the euro. That was why in the late 1990s the impending introduction of the single European currency aroused considerable interest and some anxiety in those African countries that faced possible inclusion in the EU's monetary union. The question was whether the EC institutions should take over responsibly for monetary policy in the former French African overseas territories, although they are not in the EU now, and were never part of the EEC before independence. Alternatively, experts in Europe and in Africa considered whether France should maintain its monetary guarantee, and if so, whether the CFA franc should be decoupled from the future European currency. Finally, the CFA franc zones could simply disappear. Today currencies in the fourteen Francophone states plus those of two of Portugal's former African overseas countries are simply local variants of the euro. This paper briefly puts this strange situation in its historical context, considering what has changed and what has not with the changeover from the franc CFA pegged to the French franc, to a franc CFA pegged to the euro. I shall then ask, together with mainly African economists, political analysts and politicians, whether Africa's proxy euro zone should expand to take in perhaps the entire sub Saharan continent, which has a privileged trade and aid relationship with the EU. Alternatively, do Africans and Europeans see a European monetary zone in Africa as an opportunity or as an anachronistic burden? Do Africans within the zone want to remain tied to the EU to a degree that exists in no other sovereign states outside Europe? Two of the three CFA franc cum euro monetary zones have expanded both in nature and in geographical extent, having become economic unions and taken in two ex Portuguese dependencies. Do these now wish to form even larger units and turn themselves into regional common markets, with a common currency that in reality is not a currency at all, but only one or several local variants of the euro? How do other African states regard such ambitions? The answers to these questions require first a brief historical comment.
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