Shocking aspects of monetary integration (SVAR approach)

One of the most challenging areas relating to the European Monetary Union (EMU) enlargement is the question of new member countries’ vulnerability to exogenous shocks related to euro adoption. Even if well prepared, and also considering the business cycles of the EMU candidate countries became more correlated as the result of persisting convergence toward the old EU member countries, their real output will be still vulnerable to the exogenous structural disturbances. The responsiveness of the new EMU member countries’ real output to the exogenous shocks may of course differ in intensity and durability. If we also assume a possibly low shocks correlation in these countries, the overall short-term wealth effect of the EMU membership may be rather low or even negative at all. In the paper we analyze the impact of three common exogenous structural shocks on the real output development in the new EMU member countries (Cyprus, Malta, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia) in the period 1999-2008 using SVAR (structural vector autoregression) approach. In order to meet this objective we decompose the variability of the real GDP in these countries to permanent and temporary shocks (we assume three types of shocks - nominal (liquidity), demand and supply shocks). Impulse-response functions will be also computed so that we can estimate the behaviour of the real output after structural one standard deviation innovations. The relevant outcomes of the analysis we compare with the results of the tests for the whole euro area (represented here by old EU member countries - EU-12 group). This approach helps us to understand the common as well as differing features of the real output determination in the new EMU member countries and old EU member countries.