Small transaction costs and uncertainty imply that optimal cross-currency interest rate speculation is marked by a first-order hysteresis band. Consequently uncovered interest parity does not hold and market efficiency tests based on it are misspecified. Indeed measured prediction errors are a...

This paper reviews and reassesses the methodology and principal findings of the quot;Rose effect,quot; i.e., the trade effects of currency union, looking at both EMU and non-EMU currency unions. The consensus estimate suggests that the euro has already boosted intra-euro area trade by five to...

This paper empirically confronts one explanation of spreading regionalism with the European experience. The domino theory asserts that forming a preferential trade area, or deepening an existing one, produces trade diversion that generates new political-economy forces in third nations as...