The dollar as an official reserve currency under EMU

This article analyzes official reserve-holding behavior in EU countries to assess the effect EMU might have on holdings of dollar reserves. Based on earlier research and new estimates, a wide range of projections is presented for the effect of EMU on the overall demand for reserves and their currency composition. It is argued that official dollar holdings could decline on the order of 35% or more from current dollar holdings, although the range of uncertainty is quite large. The contributions of country-specific factors appear to swamp the systematic components that had been isolated in earlier research.     

Geographic versus industry diversification: Constraints matter

This research addresses whether geographic diversification provides benefits over industry diversification in the Eurozone. Our contribution is to show that in the absence of constraints, no empirical evidence is found to support the argument that geographic diversification dominates industry diversification, except in the euro subperiod. With short-selling constraints, however, the tangency portfolio of geographic diversification is not attainable by industry diversification. In out-of-sample geographic minimum variance portfolios outperform industry portfolios in economic terms, although we cannot establish statistical significance.     

Does the dispersion of unit labor cost dynamics in the EMU imply long-run divergence?

Using unit labor cost (ULC) data from Euro area countries as well as US States and German Länder we investigate inflation convergence using different approaches, namely panel unit root tests, cointegration tests and error-correction models. All in all we cannot reject convergence of ULC growth in EMU. However, country-specific deviations from the rest of the currency union are much more pronounced and much more persistent in Europe than in the US or Germany. This holds before and after the introduction of the common currency. Hence, asymmetric shocks in the future might take a long time to dissipate.     

The Endogeneity of Optimum Currency Areas Criteria: Some Evidence from the European Union and Portugal

Observing the statistical relationship between business cycles correlation and trade intensity in the European Union, euro zone, and the Portuguese economy, we conclude that there is, in general, a positive effect that supports the endogeneity argument proposed by Frankel and Rose (The Economic Journal 108(449):pp. 1009–1025, 1998). However, if we analyse this relationship in sub-periods – 1967–1975, 1976–1985, 1986–1992, and 1993–2003 – we conclude that endogeneity hypothesis just hold in the first two, although the correlations are increasing. This could mean that, after the Single European Act in 1986, other forces beyond trade are contributing to business cycle synchronization. The Portuguese business cycle correlation with the European Union and the Euro zone had also increased in these four decades, despite the fact that endogeneity hypothesis is at a 90 percent confidence level. We also analyse the bilateral relationships between the Portuguese economy and the other European Union countries and find that the endogeneity is confirmed in just four cases: Spain, Ireland, Netherlands, and UK.     

欧盟制度化发展的研究及对泛珠三角区域合作的借鉴

中国现阶段不断升温的区域经济整合的目标,就是要在区域内消除阻碍产品和生产要素自由流动的各种体制障碍,“泛珠三角”的提出顺应了这种潮流,如何推动其区域合作的发展,正是本文要探讨的。文章通过分析欧盟制度化的进程,为“泛珠三角”制度化发展提供可行性研究并提出相关对策。