Business cycles under monetary union: EU and US business cycles compared

In discussions of the likely implications for Europe of EMU, the United States is often cited as an example of a monetary union, while the United States' central bank, the Federal Reserve System, is cited as a model for how a central bank would function in a monetary union. While the costs and benefits of monetary union in Europe have been subject to a lot of debate, the authors focus on a potential set of costs and benefits that seem to have received relatively little attention in the existing literature. Specifically, they ask what are the likely benefits to Europe in terms of business cycle stabilization or synchronization from monetary union. The authors compare the business cycle properties of the fifteen EU countries that are potentially eligible for membership in EMU with the properties of the 12 Federal Reserve districts in the U.S.