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This paper presents various economic approaches to achieving monetary union, particularly in the context of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as envisaged in the 1991 Maastricht Treaty. It evaluates the implications of Maastricht, given the economic convergence criteria embodied in the Treaty, in terms of economic policy for individual Member States and for the European Union (EU) as a whole. The paper assesses the EU's options for amending the Maastricht Treaty at its scheduled inter‐governmental conference (IGC).

AbstractIt has recently been widely recognized that monetary policy objectives change through time as our understanding of monetary policy and its impact on the macroeconomy evolves. In recent years there has been an extensive review of the framework for monetary policy at major central banks around the world, given the practical problems that have been encountered with inflation targets. This paper is a contribution to this debate, in that the aim of this paper is to evaluate the consequences of adopting different monetary policy objectives in the U.S. macroeconomic policy setting. To accomplish this, we first decompose U.S. macroeconomic data using a time‐frequency domain technique, namely discrete wavelet analysis. We then model the behavior of the U.S. economy over each wavelet frequency range and use our estimated parameters to construct a tracking model. To illustrate the usefulness of this approach, we simulate jointly optimal fiscal and monetary policy with different short‐term monetary targets: an inflation target, a money growth target, an interest rate target, and a real economic growth target. The results show that the most effective monetary policy targets to achieve economic growth are either inflation targets or economic growth targets.

This paper develops a wavelet-based control system model that can be used to simulate fiscal and monetary strategies in an open economy context in the time-frequency domain. As the emphasis on real exchange rate stability is increased, the model simulates the effects on both the aggregate and decomposed trade balance under both constant and depreciating real exchange rate targets, and also the effects on the real GDP expenditure components. This paper adds to recent research in this area by incorporating an external sector via the use of a real effective exchange rate as a driver of output. The research is also the first to analyze exchange rate effects within a time-frequency model with integrated fiscal and monetary policies in an open-economy applied wavelet-based optimal control setting. To demonstrate the usefulness of this model, we use post-apartheid South African macro data under a political targeting design for the frequency range weights, where we simulate jointly optimal fiscal and monetary policy under varying preferences for real exchange rate stability.

This paper uses wavelet-based optimal control to simulate fiscal and monetary strategies under different levels of policy restrictions. The model applies the Maximal Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform (MODWT) to United States quarterly GDP data, and then uses the decomposed variables to build a large 80 dimensional state-space linear-quadratic tracking model. Using a political targeting design for the frequency range weights, we simulate jointly optimal fiscal and monetary policy where: (1) both fiscal and monetary policy are dually emphasized, (2) fiscal policy is unrestricted while monetary policy is restricted to achieving a steady increase in the market interest rate, and (3) only monetary policy is relatively active, while fiscal spending is restricted to achieving a target growth rate. The results show that fiscal policy must be more aggressive when the monetary authorities are not accommodating the fiscal expansion, and that the dual-emphasis policy leads a series of interest rate increases that are balanced between a steadily increasing target and a low, fixed rate. This research is the first to construct integrated fiscal and monetary policies in an applied wavelet-based optimal control setting using U.S. data.

This paper first applies the MODWT (Maximal Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform) to Euro Area quarterly GDP data from 1995 – 2014 to obtain the underlying cyclical structure of the GDP components. We then design optimal fiscal and monetary policy within a large state-space LQ-tracking wavelet decomposition model. Our study builds a MATLAB program that simulates optimal policy thrusts at each frequency range where: (1) both fiscal and monetary policy are emphasized, (2) only fiscal policy is relatively active, and (3) when only monetary policy is relatively active. The results show that the monetary authorities should utilize a strategy that influences the short-term market interest rate to undulate based on the cyclical wavelet decomposition in order to compute the optimal timing and levels for the aggregate interest rate adjustments. We also find that modest emphasis on active interest rate movements can alleviate much of the volatility in optimal government spending, while rendering similarly favorable levels of aggregate consumption and investment. This research is the first to construct joint fiscal and monetary policies in an applied optimal control model based on the short and long cyclical lag structures obtained from wavelet analysis.