This paper analyses three questions related to the EU/EMU integration infrastructure: (i) interrelation between monetary and fiscal integration; (ii) interrelation between monetary integration and closer coordination of macroeconomic policies and (iii) fiscal discipline vs. fiscal solidarity. On...

Should a subset of member states of a federation be allowed to form a sub-union on some policy issue? When centralization is not politically feasible, allowing an enhanced cooperation agreement among a subset of countries permits the latter to gain benefits which would otherwise be lost....

Purpose-This paper makes an analysis of trade in the WAMZ as well as the WAMZ's trade with other countries in West Africa, Europe and Asia based on the Optimal Currency Area (OCA) theory. This theory first proposed by Mundell (1961) as a basis for evaluating whether or not an area constitutes an...

In this paper we use data from 17 African nations in order to investigate the hypothesis that monetary union - represented in this case by the CFA Franc Zone - augments the extent of macroeconomic integration. The paper covers a number of dimensions of integration including the volume of...

Bilateral and regional cooperation initiatives in Asia have been growing in importance over the last five years.These accords span the real and financial sectors; rather than following the more typical pattern of "trade first,money later", recent policy initiatives involve the simultaneous...