This study operationalizes the Optimum Currency Area (OCA) to investigate the preparedness of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) members to form a Monetary Union (MU). Inflation and output models are estimated, with the sample 1988:01 to 2017:12 for the former and 1967 to 2016...

Differential requirements for seigniorage provide a weak case for retaining monetary independence. As regards adjustment to asymmetric shocks, nominal exchange rate flexibility is at best a limited blessing and at worst a limited curse. Absence of significant fiscal redistribution mechanisms...

A currency union is when several independent sovereign nations share a common currency. This has been a recurring phenomenon in monetary history. In this article I study the theoretical foundations of such unions, and discuss some important currency unions in history, most notably the case of...

Objective: The objective of the article is to determine which exchange rate regime provides higher bilateral trade: fixed rate or currency union. Research Design & Methods: An index was designed based on variables commonly recognised as those that might affect the value of bilateral trade and...

This paper shows that currency arrangements impact on credit available through default incentives. To this end we build a symmetric two-country model with money and imperfect credit market integration. With the Euro Area context in mind, we capture differences in credit market integration by...

The paper analyses the common European monetary policy based on a Mises-Hayek overinvestment framework, which is combined with the theory of optimum currency areas. It shows how since the turn of the millennium a too expansionary monetary policy contributed to unsustainable overinvestment booms...

This paper studies the welfare impact of a common monetary policy in the context of a two-country, general equilibrium model with liquidity effect and nominal wage contracts, heterogeneous agents, imperfect competition in the labor market, trade in goods, immobility of labor and mobility of...

The creation of a monetary union alters the incentives private agents face when bargaining their wage contracts. The model presented here introduces country specific real shocks to the Gray (1976) optimal wage indexation framework for a continuum of unions. It is assumed that the unions engage...

This paper is intended to theoretically present divergent business cycles as effects of a monetary union, even in the absence of asymmetric, exogenous shocks. The main inference form the model developed in this paper says that microeconomic optimization may lead to sub-optimal macro states and...