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...

The introduction of a common currency in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been the subject of extensive research over the past couple of decades, with extant issues ranging from viability and feasibility to sustainability of monetary integration in the region. This...

We analyze different behavioral models of expectation formation in a multicountry New Keynesian currency union model. Our analyses yield the following robust results. First, economic integration is of crucial importance for the stability of the economic dynamics in a currency union. Second, when...

Twenty years of euro history confirms the euro's stability and position as the second global currency. It also enjoys the support of majority of the euro area population and is seen as a good thing for the European Union. The European Central Bank has been successful in keeping inflation at a...

In this paper I discuss various notions and aspects of integration and macroeconomic convergence, namely economic and monetary integration; real and nominal convergence. The EU has offered a great deal of information about the relation between all these types of integration and macroeconomic...

In 1961, in the earlier stage of the European integration, professor Bela Balassa proposed a five successive phase model. Today, the half century experience on integration and corresponding literature issued lets us see rather two big phases (instead of five). The one would be the incipient...