This paper reassesses whether the euro area satisfies the criteria of an optimum currency area. It contrasts early hopes of convergence with subsequent developments marked by persistent heterogeneity across member states. Differences in economic structures, fiscal policies, and financial cycles...

The 1955-56 macroeconomic crisis is a central event in modern Irish history. Yet, despite this centrality, its causes are not clearly understood. In 1955-6, Ireland, which had previously followed British interest rates in lockstep as part of its fixed exchange with the latter, briefly...

The 1955-56 macroeconomic crisis is a central event in modern Irish history. Yet, despite this centrality, its causes are not clearly understood. In 1955-6, Ireland, which had previously followed British interest rates in lockstep as part of its fixed exchange with the latter, briefly...

This study examines how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the CFA franc (XOF) compared to the euro (EUR) within the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). It is among the first to assess both currencies under systemic stress by combining event studies, risk metrics, and ARDL regressions....

The study evaluates the feasibility of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries to form an Optimum Currency Area (OCA) through the analysis of shock correlation within the OCA framework. Employing a structural vector auto regression (SVAR) model proposed by Blanchard and...

This paper investigates the relationship between economic divergence and expansionary monetary policies within the eurozone based on a new divergence indicator. We study the dynamics between the economic divergence of member states and unconventional monetary policy in a Bayesian SVAR and find a...

This paper applies unsupervised machine-learning techniques to a set of nominal and industrial sector production variables to examine the convergence of European Monetary Union (EMU) member countries, focusing on macroeconomic and structural homogeneity. Our findings reveal distinct clusters of...

How does a monetary union alter the impact of business cycle shocks at the household level? We develop a Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian model of two countries (HANK2) and show in closed form that a monetary union shifts the adjustment to a shock horizontally - across countries - within the...

In this study, we used a Bayesian dynamic factor model (BDFM) to examine the share of variance explained by the European and country factors for 59 regions in Eurozone countries in the period of 1992 to 2020. The BDFM output facilitated the construction of a criterion that enables the assessment...

Financial stability is paramount to the proper functioning of open markets and is deeply affected by financial fragmentation. Both financial stability and financial fragmentation have unintended consequences on optimal currency areas. In this paper, we survey the original optimal currency areas...

In the 24 years since its introduction, the euro has experienced a financial crisis, a government debt crisis, a global pandemic, and an energy crisis-and survived. Using a model focusing on households, this Weekly Report shows that the monetary union’s stability is rooted in the fact that the...

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...

The main goal of this paper is to estimate to what extent the federal government of the United States insures member states against regional income shocks. We find that a one dollar reduction in a region's per capita personal income triggers a decrease in federal taxes of about 34 cents and an...

We analyze the political economy causes and consequences of a monetary unification among countries with different institutional quality. Before a common currency, countries with stronger institutions have more efficient public spending and lower taxes, leading to better productive incentives and...

This working paper was written by Yin-wong Cheung (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Jude Yuen (University of California, Santa Cruz).The study assesses the level of integration among the three Greater China economies (namely China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) and examines the suitability of...

We propose a new and time-varying optimum currency area (OCA) index for the euro area in assessing the evolution of the OCA properties of the monetary union from an international business cycle perspective. It is derived from the relative importance of symmetric vs. asymmetric shocks that result...

The key conclusions of the Optimum Currency Area (OCA) literature is that for a currency area to be successful, the benefits of joining should outweigh the costs that the loss of monetary policy tools entails for prospective member. To this end, a number of criteria need to be met to reduce the...

The theory of optimum-currency-areas was conceived and developed in three highly influential papers, written by Mundell (1961), McKinnon (1963) and Kenen (1969). Those authors identified characteristics that potential members of a monetary union should ideally possess in order to make it...

On February 24-25, 2006 an international workshop on “Regional and International Currency Arrangements” was held in Vienna. It was co-sponsored by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and the Bank of Greece, and jointly organized by Eduard Hochreiter and George Tavlas. Academic economists and...

During the last few years there has been a renewed analysis in currency unions as a form of monetary arrangement. This new interest has been largely triggered by the Euro experience. Scholars and policy makers have asked about the optimal number of currencies in the world economy. They have...

This paper focuses on the requirements and features of a successful monetary union on the basis of the optimum currency area theory, the “logical roadmap” for integration as proposed by Balassa as well as the economic and institutional framework of the European Economic and Monetary Union...

We analyze causes and consequences of a monetary unification among countries with different institutional quality. Countries with stronger institutions choose a more productive policy, resulting in a stronger currency and lower taxes. Governments under weaker institutions prefer more spending...

The present paper has two aims. The first aim is to test whether six new member states of the European Union (the six Central and Eastern European Countries) form an optimum currency area (OCA) with the eurozone, in an attempt to assess their readiness for euro adoption. The second aim is to...

In this paper we show that a currency area can be a self-validating optimal policy regime, even when monetary unification does not foster real economic integration and intra-industry trade. This is because profit-maximizing producers in a currency area adopt endogenous pricing strategies that...

The paper analyzes the convergence of inflation rates in the group of more developed members of the Eurozone (core countries). What are the characteristics and is the inflation process in these countries sufficiently homogeneous? Are the analysed inflation rates converging, so that there is an...

This research aims to analyze the feasibility of implementing single currency policy in ASEAN+3 countries such as Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, China, South Korea, and Japan based on annual data from 1993 to 2017. In...