Perspectives for Future Economic Policy Coordination within EMU

While rules, procedures and institutions for economic policy-making in EMU have been put in place, their functioning is still open to the tests of reality. The singular mix of a centralized monetary policy and decentralized fiscal (and structural) policies makes coordination procedures a necessity, if an optimal policy mix pursuing the objectives of Art. 2 TEU is to be achieved. Inclusion of social partners into macro-policy coordination, as proposed in the new European Employment Pact, is a necessary complement, if wage policy is to play its role as a shock absorber for asymmetric shocks, but also in order to align policy orientations of all actors. While during the start-up phase of EMU each policy actor focuses on his own independence and autonomy, in the future the everyday task of conducting economic policy will lead to a more pragmatic cooperation by all actors.     

International Macroeconomic Policy Coordination: Any Lessons for EMU? A Selective Survey of the Literature

The theoretical case for international coordination was well established, and presumed settled, in the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, the focus of research shifted to intertemporal aspects of economic interdependence. In the early 1990s, the subject no longer generated as much interest among economists as it might have deserved from an economic policy perspective. With EMU, the topic of coordination has once again found its way onto the political and scientific agenda. In fact, the EMU regime not only raises a number of new and important questions concerning policy coordination, it might also be interpreted as a surrogate for far-reaching forms of policy coordination. At the same time, more ambitious forms of coordination are confronted in any case with coordination constraints imposed by the EMU – regime itself, such as the independence provision of the ESCB and the supreme monetary policy goal of maintaining price stability. Without doubt, economists' and political scientists studies on coordination will not be suited to serve as blueprints of policy coordination for policymakers to follow at summit meetings. But even if the key question - how much relevance the abundant literature on coordination may hold for the real world – could not be answered definitely, it – at least – provides useful analytical insights in the structure of coordination problems. And an improved analytical understanding of macroeconomic interaction is a necessary prerequisite for more successful efforts at policy coordination.     

Monetary Policy Stress in EMU: What Role for Fundamentals and Missed Forecasts?

This article reexamines the problem of monetary policy stress in the EMU. In addition to estimating the amount of stress in particular countries, we investigate its sources by breaking it down into its “fundamental” parts, covering how it is a result of country-specific macroeconomic divergences and the EMU-wide “non-fundamental” component, with special attention given to the role of missed forecasts. Our results confirm that peripheral countries were exposed to risks emerging from low interest rates while the “core” countries did not suffer from much monetary policy stress. Interestingly, the bulk of it was non-fundamental, i.e., not caused by inflation and output gap differentials between countries. We show that missed forecasts did make an important contribution to this part of the stress and were mainly responsible for pushing the interest rate below its rule-consistent level.     

Sacrifice ratio dispersion within the Euro Zone: what can be learned about implementing a single monetary policy?

This article focuses on the comparison of sacrifice ratios as an indicator for structural dispersion within the euro area over the period 1972–2003. Estimates of the sacrifice ratio, defined as the cumulative output cost arising from permanent inflation reduction, are obtained using structural VAR models. Results from sub‐period analysis as well as 10‐year‐period rolling estimates lead to two main conclusions. First, empirical evidence displays a recent increase in the average sacrifice ratio, which can be linked to the simultaneous decrease in the average inflation rate: this negative relationship between the initial level of inflation and the cost of disinflation can be seen as a justification for the choice of an inflation objective close to 2% for the European Central Bank (ECB) rather than a target of perfect price stability, potentially very damaging. Second, we cannot provide evidence of any reduction in European sacrifice ratio dispersion, which would suggest that the nominal convergence triggered by the Maastricht Treaty did not involve a true reduction of structural differences. It is likely to be a problem in the stance of a single monetary policy, because structural differences imply asymmetric responses of real national economies to the same monetary impulse.     

高速动车组制动盘热力耦合分析

高速动车在紧急制动工况下,制动盘表面温度分布不均致使制动盘热胀冷缩产生热应力,进而导致制动盘出现热裂纹失效,针对上述问题,以某型号高速动车组拖车制动盘为研究对象,对其在300 km/h紧急制动工况过程开展热力耦合特性研究。综合考虑制动盘材料随温度变化而变化,且制动闸片与制动盘接触面的几何形状和分布对热流密度的影响,建立了基于微元法的摩擦面热流密度计算模型;结合热传导、对流换热和热辐射模型,建立了制动盘的应力计算模型,并对制动盘进行热力耦合分析,得到制动盘的温度和应力分布规律。结果表明,制动过程中制动盘最高温度出现摩擦区域靠近外圈位置处,需采取必要的散热措施;最大应力出现在靠近内圈的散热筋部位,设计时需优化此处结构。新方法构建了基于多物理参数和变梯度微元法的热力耦合模型,有效模拟了高速动车组的紧急制动过程,研究结果可为高速动车组制动盘的选材和结构设计优化提供理论依据。     

The Stability and Growth Pact: A Delicate Balance or an Albatross?

The EU's Stability and Growth Pact tries to strike a delicate balance: it imposes the constraints on national fiscal policy that were deemed necessary to protect the new European Central Bank from outside pressures; at the same time, it allows flexibility for a counter-cyclical policy. First, we review official institutions' studies of the flexibility embedded in the Pact and find a rather strong consensus: the Pact seems likely to constrain counter-cyclical fiscal efforts in the years ahead, or at least until EU governments bring their structural deficits into balance. Then, we review conventional academic arguments that suggest a new central bank might need to be protected from external pressures, and we ask if the constraints that were actually written into the Pact are likely to be helpful in this regard. We conclude that the Pact is closer to an albatross than a delicately balanced package of necessary fiscal constraints.     

Monetary and financial stability in the euro area: Pro-cyclicality versus trade-off

This paper investigates the nexus between monetary stability and financial stability. We examine, in the experience of EMU between 1994 and 2008, first, the response of the term structure of interest rates, share prices, exchange rates, property price inflation and the deposit–loan ratio of the banking sector (our proxies for financial stability) to changes in the consumer price level and ECB policy rate (our proxies for monetary stability); second, whether and to what extent lower inflation has caused share price stability and how ECB policy rate has reacted to inflation. Using a sign-restriction-based VAR approach, we find that there is a pro-cyclical relationship between monetary and financial stability in the long-run. With a positive inflation shock, we find on average a 2% estimated decline in share prices. This suggests that the interest rate instrument used for inflation targeting is conducive to financial stability.     

大理动车运用所选址方案研究

随着多条铁路引入大理枢纽及周边路网的完善,枢纽内急需增加动车组运用检修存放设施,以满足旅客出行需求及实现大理地区路网通达的需要。在阐述大理枢纽规划和动车组检修工作量的基础上,确定大理动车运用所规模,分析横列式和纵列式2个布置方案,结合动车运用所选址原则提出蛇山方案、苍甸山方案、凤仪方案3个动车运用所选址方案,从运营长度、工程条件、后期发展等方面对3个方案进行综合比选,最终确定经济合理、适应城市规划及铁路科学发展的蛇山方案。动车运用所的建设研究有利于完善大理枢纽功能,提升铁路区域运输能力。     

Market Impact on financial market integration: Cross-quantilogram analysis of the global impact of the euro

We contribute to the literature by providing a more comprehensive understanding of the impact the euro has had on financial market integration with economies of different characteristics outside and within the European market via inclusion of market conditions influence on the level of financial integration. Our paper employs the recently developed cross-quantilogram (Han et al., 2016) approach to examine quantile dependence between the conditional stock return distributions of Germany and the UK with that of three common currency groups within EMU (Finland, France, and Italy), two global leading markets (the US and Japan), and two of the most promising emerging markets (China and India). We find three key results. First, both the EU membership and the common currency union affect the degree of financial market integration. Nevertheless, disentangling the effects of EU membership from the common currency shows that the common currency group has an additional impact on financial integration, as the degree of dependence is stronger in the common currency group than in the sovereign currency group and other groups. Second, there is a heterogeneous dependence structure, which is strongly observed for the UK and German stock returns with that of developed (the US and Japan) and emerging markets (India and China). Third, cross-quantile correlations change over time, especially in low and high quantiles, indicating that they are prone to jumps and discontinuities in the dependence structure. As far as we are aware, this is the first study in this field employing a cross-quantilogram method to examine the impact of different market conditions on the correlations, making our study a pioneer in the field of stock market integration.     

Comparing post-crisis dynamics across Euro Area countries with the Global Multi-country model

Following the global financial crisis, the Euro Area (EA) has experienced a persistent slump and notable trade balance adjustments, but with pronounced differences across EA Member States. We estimate a multi-country structural macroeconomic model to assess and compare the main drivers of GDP growth and trade balance adjustment across Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. We find that the pronounced post-crisis slump in Italy and Spain was mainly driven by positive saving shocks (‘deleveraging’) and by an increase in investment and intra-euro risk premia. Fiscal austerity in Spain and the productivity slowdown in Italy have been additional sizable contributors to the economic downturn. The results further suggest that euro depreciation, heightened intra-euro risk premia and subdued investment had a sizable impact on the trade balance reversals in Italy and Spain, which has been offset in France by a strong increase in imports and lower exports.