Price‐level co‐movements within currency unions: An alternative integration metric

This paper analyses currency union integration by testing whether price levels in member countries possess a common stochastic trend. The trace statistic test for cointegration proposed by (Johansen, 1995) demonstrates the presence of such a trend for most unions. A disaggregated analysis identifies a common stochastic trend for several though fewer than half of country pairs within a union. Some unions such as the Eurozone have small shares of cointegrated country pairs. Yet, the share of cointegrated country pairs is large relative to countries outside currency unions. Comparison to a control group (country pairs where one country belongs to a given union and the other country does not) indicates that the cointegration found within a currency union is a union‐specific trait and not a feature of the individual countries within the union. These results provide an alternative metric to intraunion trade for gauging the extent of currency union integration.     

The common sources of business cycles in Trans‐Pacific countries and the US? A comparison with NAFTA

This paper uses both a non‐structural and a structural approach to investigate the drivers of the business cycles in the US and 15 Trans‐Pacific (TP) countries. Our non‐structural analysis, based on a principal component methodology, reveals the shares of variation in macroeconomic variables that are due to factors common to both the US and the TP region, and factors that are region‐specific. We obtain similar measures by using a structural model (an estimated two‐country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model) that allows for common and correlated shocks across the two regions. The clear and common finding from our analyses is that common shocks explain a substantial amount of macroeconomic variation. Comparison with the NAFTA region, along this dimension, reveals that the US economy is more similar to the TP region (a wider region that also includes Mexico and Canada) than its two neighbours.     

The feasibility of currency union in Gulf Cooperation Council countries: A business cycle synchronisation view

This paper study the feasibility of a monetary union among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, by measuring the evolution of economic integration among them. Considering the critical role of crisis and shocks in the integration process within the region, we determine whether GCC countries are characterised by a common business cycle. We suggest a different empirical approach that, unlike previous studies, allows one to endogenously detect structural changes in the comovement process between outputs. We apply a new measure for this region that is based on the time‐varying coherence function. Such a measure not only detects comovement dynamics but also distinguishes these dynamics in terms of short‐ and long‐term cycles. Additionally, we can test whether certain countries tend to be more synchronised. The main finding of this study is that not all GCC countries share a common short‐term business cycle. However, in the long term, all country‐pairs indicate a medium‐level synchronisation in the most recent subperiods. The new role of the United Arab Emirates’ regional trade platform allows it to strengthen long‐term business cycle comovement, thus differentiating it from other GCC country‐pairs that have shown a decline in the last two subperiods.     

Supply Chains,Global Financial Shocks and Firm Behaviour towards Liquidity Needs

Driven by the increasingly important role of supply chains in global production, this paper studies empirical association between global credit‐market shocks and firm behaviour towards liquidity needs across countries and industries. Focusing on the adjustment of working‐capital financing, we find two pieces of supporting evidence from international firm‐level panel data covering the period 2002:I–2012:IV. First, for industries where specific investment in the input supplier–customer relationship is large, firms are more exposed to credit‐market shocks. We find that measures of global credit‐market shocks are negatively associated with trade receivables, trade payables and inventories, conditional on the level of contract intensity in the industries where firms operate. Second, firms in emerging markets are more vulnerable to credit‐market shocks than are firms in developed countries. We are also able to verify the economic significance of sales growth, operating cash flows, cash stock and firm size in the overall adjustment. Our findings highlight the importance of balance‐sheet contagion along supply chains during the 2007–09 global financial crisis.     

Decoupling and Contagion: The Special Case of the Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis

This paper demonstrates that the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis constitutes a special case in the contagion literature with general implications. Perfectly correlated bond markets imply that contagion can only occur if there is a decoupling to lower correlation levels with increased idiosyncratic shocks leading to more severe but less systemic spillovers. This theoretical prediction is fully supported by the empirical analysis. We also show that dynamic coexceedance estimates provide a more robust and more general picture of contagion than correlation‐based tests. Coexceedances identify only one major incidence of contagion that affected five periphery Eurozone countries in May 2010 and coincided with flight to quality from the periphery to the core and the 2010 “flash crash” in US equity markets.     

On the Optimality of a GCC Monetary Union: Structural VAR,Common Trends,and Common Cycles Evidence

The suitability of the proposed monetary union among the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is examined. The authors identify the underlying structural shocks that these economies are subject to and assess the extent to which the shocks are symmetric. Alternatively, the authors test for common trends and common business cycles among the GCC economies. They find that while the transitory demand shocks are typically symmetric, the permanent supply shocks are asymmetric. Furthermore, they do not find synchronous long‐run and short‐run movements in output. Despite the progress that has been made in terms of integration, the findings indicate that the conditions for forming a GCC monetary union have not as yet been met.     

(De)Unionization,Trade Liberalization and Selection

The effects of union bargaining power and trade liberalization on industry selection are analysed within a two‐country heterogeneous‐firm model with firm‐specific unions and inter‐country asymmetries in size and union power. Union bargaining power is shown to have more nuanced effects on efficiency and welfare than what typically suggested by conventional wisdom. While the higher wages resulting from an unfavourable union power differential harm firms' competitiveness, by reinforcing standard market access mechanisms, they give rise to aggregate demand effects that can act as a catalyst for industry and result in a pro‐variety effect.     

To be or not to be in monetary union: A synthesis

Monetary union can benefit countries suffering from policy credibility problems if it eliminates the inflation bias and also allows for more efficient management of certain shocks. But it also carries costs as some stabilization may be feasible even in the absence of credibility, and this may be more than what an individual country can hope for in a monetary union. In this paper, we combine the stabilization and credibility branches of the currency union literature and construct a simple welfare criterion that can be used to evaluate alternative monetary arrangements. We produce examples where monetary union may be welfare improving even for low-modest levels of inflation bias (2-3%) as long as business cycles are not too a-synchronized across countries.     

The Role of Geography in Financial and Economic Integration: A Comparative Analysis of Foreign Direct Investment,Trade and Portfolio Investment Flows

The objective of this paper is to examine the role of geography in explaining the patterns of financial and economic integration among both developed and developing countries. Using a gravity model, we compare North‐North, North‐South and South‐North FDI, trade and portfolio investment flows to examine how geographical factors influence these bilateral flows. The results indicate that the impact of geography variables on FDI and portfolio are similar to their effect on trade. Geography variables have a statistically significant effect both on FDI and portfolio investment, but FDI is more sensitive to distance. We interpret the negative effect of distance as the existence of information costs in financial flows. Also bilateral FDI, trade and portfolio investment flows react to macroeconomic fundamentals in the same way, however, with different degrees of sensitivity. There are significant differences between North‐North and North‐South flows. Our results find support for the argument that most FDI among industrial countries are horizontal, whereas most FDI investment in developing countries is vertical. The fact that the significance of geographical variables on financial flows still remained even after controlling for the macroeconomic fundamentals, is in contrast with the standard capital market model. The results can, however, be reconciled if geographical factors can proxy for information costs, which may in turn explain why country portfolios are still home‐biased. The significant effect of distance on financial flows may also explain how idiosyn cratic shocks are spread (i.e. contagion) to other countries in the same region. Ultimately, the geographical location of a country may determine its economic and financial integration into the world economy.     

Intraregional Spillovers in South America: Is Brazil Systemic After All?

The high business cycle correlation between Brazil (the large neighbour in South America) and other countries in the region has been a frequent source of concern for policymakers, as it has been viewed as evidence of the large influence of the former country on its neighbours. This paper studies the importance of such influence, documenting trade linkages over the last two decades and quantifying spillover effects in a vector autoregression setting. We find that, after controlling for common external factors, spillovers from Brazil are only relevant for Southern Cone economies (especially Mercosur's members) and Peru, but not for the rest of South America, and these findings are consistent with the extent of trade linkages between these countries. We find also that spillovers can take two different forms: the transmission of Brazil‐specific shocks and the amplification of global shocks – through their impact on Brazil's output. Finally, we also find suggestive evidence that depreciations of Brazil's currency may not have significant impact on output of its key trading partners.     

India and the Impossible Trinity

In the 1990s, India responded to the well‐known trilemma of macroeconomic policy by adopting an intermediate exchange rate system combined with selective capital controls. This regime enabled the country to balance exchange rate stability, exchange rate targeting and monetary autonomy, and to weather successfully various shocks that included contagion from the East Asian crisis. India's experience serves to reinforce doubts about the desirability of bipolar exchange rate regimes for developing countries as an integral element of a new international financial architecture.     

Who benefits from partial tax coordination?

In this paper, we investigate whether partial tax coordination is beneficial to countries within and outside a tax union, in which countries are supposed to compete in taxes and infrastructure. Our results demonstrate that a subgroup of countries agreeing on a common tax rate can harm both member and nonmember states. This is in contrast to the classical findings that partial tax harmonisation is Pareto improving. When a minimum tax rate is imposed within a tax union, we demonstrate that it does not necessarily improve the welfare of the member countries. Moreover, both the high‐tax and low‐tax countries can be worse off. This conclusion is at odds with the classical result that a high‐tax country benefits from the imposition of a lower tax bound.     

On the stability of domestic financial market linkages in the presence of time-varying volatility

We analyze the stability of domestic financial linkages between periods of calm and turbulent market conditions. Our model develops a simultaneous test of shift contagion and bi-directional pure contagion, which is applied to the equity and currency markets of a group of East Asian emerging economies. Our results show a great deal of instability in these markets with widespread evidence of pure contagion in both directions. There is less evidence of shift contagion with the transmission of common shocks unchanged between regimes for the majority of countries.     

Correlations in emerging market bonds: The role of local and global factors

This paper empirically assesses co-movements in emerging market bond returns and disentangles the roles of external and domestic factors during episodes of heightened market volatility. The conceptual framework, set in the context of asset allocation, allows us to describe the channels through which shocks originating in a particular emerging or mature market are transmitted across countries and markets. We show that a simple measure of cross-country correlations, when presented together with the more commonly used average correlation coefficient, can be more informative during episodes of heightened market volatility. Data for the period 1997–2008 are analysed for evidence of true contagion and common external shocks.     

Who Cares About Corporate Taxation? Asymmetric Tax Effects on Outbound FDI

This paper investigates whether different types of FDI are asymmetrically affected by corporate taxation. We classify investment projects according to several characteristics such as the general motivation for FDI, the type of business activity, or the degree of internationalisation of the multinational firm. Subsequently, we analyse how local taxes influence the number of German outbound investments in European countries. The analysis reveals significant asymmetries with regard to tax effects: vertically integrated investments are more sensitive to host‐country taxation than horizontal FDI; larger tax rate elasticities are estimated if business activities are considered highly mobile; and in accordance with profit‐shifting considerations, subsidiaries of more internationalised companies are less tax responsive to host‐country taxation.     

Inflation targeting rules and welfare in an asymmetric currency area

This paper studies the effect on monetary policy of differing degrees of competition and differing degrees of nominal rigidity between the members of a monetary union. In particular, we assess the welfare loss brought about by the use of a simple interest rate rule that does not take into account such structural differences. Our results show that, ceteris paribus, to maximize welfare the central bank should react more strongly to inflation pressure generated by the more competitive economies. Our work extends the results of Benigno [Benigno, P., 2004. Optimal monetary policy in a currency area. Journal of International Economics 63, 293-320] by showing that, if the degree of competition differs between countries, the optimal rule could involve placing a greater weight on the more “flexible” countries. Our study suggests that the size of the welfare losses generated by failure to take account of these asymmetries depends crucially on the actual combination of the various asymmetries. As a consequence, we show that, if the optimal weights are chosen under incomplete information regarding the extent and type of asymmetries, the resulting level of welfare could be lower than that produced by the symmetric rule.     

Labour Market Institutions and Household Consumption Insurance within OECD Countries

This paper tests empirically whether the effect of idiosyncratic income shocks on aggregate consumption depends on institutional features of national labour markets. The results show that, in a sample of 15 OECD countries, institutional heterogeneity is a significant determinant of the response of household consumption to country‐specific income shocks. This is consistent with the idea that institutionally provided social insurance may help increase income stability when people differ in their ability to access financial markets and smooth consumption fluctuations.     

External Public Debt,Trade Linkages and Contagion During the Eurozone Crisis

Against the backdrop of the contagion literature, the paper analyses the impact of financial and trade linkages on sovereign bond spreads in the Eurozone crisis. Using quarterly data for a sample of EMU countries during the period 2000–13, we estimate fixed‐effect panel models with Driscoll and Kraay standard errors that are robust to general forms of spatial and temporal dependence. Our main results can be summarised as follows: first, we suggest that the ‘sudden stop’ of capital inflow towards the peripheral sovereign debt triggered a re‐segmentation of financial markets and economic systems along national borders, with negative implications for risk‐sharing and the efficient allocation of capital. The ‘home bias’ effect – that is the increase in the share of sovereign debt held by domestic banks – worsened the country‐specific risk because the twin crisis (sovereign and banking) began to be conceived as more closely intertwined within countries than before. Second, the structure of international trade helps to account for the geographic scope of contagion, even after controlling for macroeconomic and fiscal vulnerabilities. Finally, the ‘substitution effect’ of public debt securities of stand‐alone emerging countries has affected more the sovereign spreads in the core than in the periphery.     

Global financial conditions,country spreads and macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging countries

This paper uses a panel structural vector autoregressive (VAR) model to investigate the extent to which global financial conditions, i.e., a global risk-free interest rate and global financial risk, and country spreads contribute to macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging countries. The main findings are: (1) global financial risk shocks explain about 20% of movements both in the country spread and in the aggregate activity in emerging economies. (2) The contribution of global risk-free interest rate shocks to macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging economies is negligible. Its role, which was emphasized in the literature, is taken up by global financial risk shocks. (3) Country spread shocks explain about 15 percent of the business cycles in emerging economies. (4) Interdependence between economic activity and the country spread is a key mechanism through which global financial shocks are transmitted to emerging economies.     

What Determines Export Diversification in the Development Process? Empirical Assessment

This paper assesses the role played by country‐specific factors as determinants of relative export diversification. Using a panel data set for 60 countries and 20 years (1985–2004), we confirm that even after clearing out differences in income per capita, cross‐country variability in the degree of export diversification is significant. In general, apart from per capita income, features influencing the size of accessible markets (domestic and foreign) are the most relevant and robust determinants of the export diversification process. Diversification opportunities grow if countries are large and not located far from economic core areas and when barriers to trade are restricted.