Real unit labor costs (RULC) growth differentials between euro area members have persisted since EMU began and even widened out in the run-up to the crisis. This paper focuses on the causes underlying such dispersion. According to our empirical findings, persistent RULC growth differentials can...

Whether the prospective shift of the peg of the CFA franc to the euro would constitute an exchange rate arrangement with EMU countries would depend critically on the interpretation of the free convertibility of the CFA franc guaranteed by France. Nonetheless, this shift is likely to leave the...

This paper assesses changes in synchronization of real activity and financial market integration in Western Europe and evaluates their implications for financial stability. We find increased synchronization of real activity since the early 1980s and increased equity markets integration since the...

This paper discusses the challenges that European Monetary Union (EMU) poses for European labor markets, emphasizing in particular the regional dimension of the European unemployment problem. The authors argue that the inability of labor markets to adjust to shocks is largely a regional problem...

Once upon a time, in the 1990s, it was widely agreed that neither Europe nor the United States was an optimum currency area, although moderating this concern was the finding that it was possible to distinguish a regional core and periphery (Bayoumi and Eichengreen, 1993). Revisiting these...

We examine economic convergence among euro area countries on multiple dimensions. While there was nominal convergence of inflation and interest rates, real convergence of per capita income levels has not occurred among the original euro area members since the advent of the common currency....

The theoretical literature has argued that a centralized wage bargaining system may result in low regional wage differentiation and high regional unemployment differentials. The empirical literature has found that centralized wage bargaining leads to lower wage inequality for different skills,...

Debates surrounding the adoption of a common currency have focused on its benefits weighed against the long-term costs of losing monetary independence. These debates have assumed that the penalty for not adopting a common currency is the maintenance of the status quo. This paper uses the...

Recent studies conclude that the ongoing global financial integration may have had little or no value in advancing economic growth, especially in poor countries. Capital is often found to flow ""uphill"" from poor to rich countries. And, when it does flow into the less developed economies, it is...