Governance of the Euro Area: Fiscal Union,Debt Union,Fiscal Freedom

Over the past three years, as the euro area has struggled with high levels of sovereign debt, it has been gradually developing into a debt union. However, this is not a sustainable arrangement. This article proposes two alternatives to a debt union — a fiscal union and a monetary union with fiscal freedom — and evaluates the pros and cons of each approach.     

东亚区域货币联盟实践、前景与对策

东亚区域货币联盟得到大多数理论研究的支持,各国政府也表现出较大的兴趣,东盟10+3货币互换安排和亚洲债券基金是东亚货币金融合作的两个标志性事件。在可预见的将来,东亚有可能出现某种松散的货币联盟,以流动性提供机制为核心、建立相对灵活的汇率稳定机制、以其他经济领域一体化为基础、保持“亚洲传统”的特色,是东亚货币联盟的四大特点。中国应该采取积极、灵活的政策,在全面经济金融合作的基础上支持区域货币联盟,并在其中发挥应有的作用。     

Vulnerability to a Currency Crisis: Lessons from the Asian Experience

Are currency crises caused by manias and panics in financial markets, or by unsustainable deteriorations in domestic macroeconomic conditions? This question is explored in the context of the recent Asian currency crisis. The theoretical concept of vulnerability is used to identify three early‐warning indicators of susceptibility to a currency crisis: rapid accumulation of mobile capital; domestic lending booms; and overvalued exchange rates. It is shown that the crisis and noncrisis countries of Asia may be distinguished empirically, using these indicators, over the decade preceding the crisis. This exercise provides convincing evidence that the crisis emanated largely from domestic macroeconomic conditions.     

东亚货币合作:基于最优货币区指数的实证研究

本文在修正BE模型的基础上计算了东亚国家之间的最优货币区指数,认为东亚各国的最优货币区指数有减少的趋势,表明东亚货币合作存在可行性;截面数据的最优货币区指数显示在中国大陆、香港、台湾地区、韩国和日本这些次区域内先进行货币合作是较为可行的现实选择;另外与欧洲相比,东亚地区的最优货币区指数较大,表明东亚的货币合作将是一个长期渐进的过程。     

The Relations between the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean

The EU is the second-largest trading partner (after the USA) of the Latin American and Caribbean countries (LAC). The European Commission is presently in the process of negotiating association agreements with three Latin American regional trading associations, a result of the fact that the EU has traditionally preferred multilateral treaties to bilateral ones as a means of its international trade policy. These negotiations have proved to be very complex and progress is difficult. Will the two-yearly meeting of the Heads of State and Government of the EU and the LAC in Peru in May 2008 take place under the sign of a return to a policy with more emphasis on bilateral agreements? The recent agreement with Brazil seems to point in this direction.     

中国-东盟相互贸易依存度与建立东亚货币区的路径选择

本文在最优货币区理论的框架下,通过对中国与东盟人均GDP最高的6个成员国之间相互贸易依存度的回归分析和趋势预测,对比欧元区的历史经验得出,在目前和今后一段时期内尚不具备建立整个东亚货币区的条件下,东亚货币区的建设值得考虑的路径应该是:第一,首先推动中国的内地、香港、澳门和台湾四大经济体的经济与货币一体化;第二,在中国—东盟自由贸易区的基础上推动中国和东盟人均GDP最高的6个国家组成“1+6”货币区;第三,“1+6”货币区再分阶段吸引韩国、日本和其他4个东盟成员国加入,从而最终促成东亚货币区的形成。     

欧元区财政与货币政策非对称性搭配的经济效应分析——搭便车问题的蒙代尔—弗莱明模型分析

欧元启动后,欧盟统一的货币政策和相对分散的财政政策成为欧盟政策协调的一个核心问题。采用一般均衡的分析方法,运用蒙代尔—弗莱明模型对这一非对称性制度搭配所带来的搭便车问题进行了分析,指出成员国财政政策协调失灵和财政危机将会引发欧盟整体的汇率危机和银行业危机等一系列现实问题。     

The adjustment mechanism in the Euro Area

This paper analyses the adjustment mechanism in the euro area prior to the crisis. Results show that the real exchange rate adjusted to redress cyclical divergences and that after monetary unification, real exchange rate dynamics became less reactive to country-specific shocks but also less persistent. Regulations affecting price and wage nominal flexibility and employment protection play a role in the adjustment mechanism. Indicators of product and labour regulations appear to matter for both the reaction of price competitiveness to cyclical divergences and for the inertia of competitiveness indicators.     

The Socio-Political Dimensions of the Currency: Implications for the Transition to the Euro

In the first section of this paper, the author demonstrates the crucial significance of anchoring symbolically a currency in the representation of a social whole, not least when practical and technical problems bound up with the creation of a new unit of account and the associated means of payment have to be addressed. In the second section of the paper, on the basis of this analysis, a number of practical implications for the transition to the euro are drawn. The analysis starts with the irreducible political and social dimensions of money related to its traditional public functions. The differentiation of modern societies gives to national currencies a regulatory role in insuring the social bond, as the same currency must be accepted in the public economy as well as in the private one. A series of conditions of legitimacy and confidence in the currency can then be drawn from its participation in the social regulation. To achieve legitimacy, every currency must on the one hand be an instrument that can provide the necessary credit for the development of production and trade and allow people to pay their debts to the public authorities, but it must also serve as a symbol of political belonging to a community. This last dimension of the currency is very often overlooked precisely because it is taken for granted. It is these political and symbolic dimensions of money which the transition to the euro now puts squarely on the centre stage.     

Macroeconomic fluctuations in the Eastern Caribbean: The role of climatic and external shocks

This article develops country-specific vector autoregressive (VAR) models with block exogeneity restrictions to analyze how exogenous factors affect business cycles in the Eastern Caribbean. It finds that external shocks play a key role, explaining more than half of macroeconomic fluctuations in the region. Domestic business cycles are especially vulnerable to changes in climatic conditions, with a natural disaster leading to an immediate and significant fall in output – but the effects do not appear to be persistent. Oil price and external demand shocks also contribute significantly to domestic macroeconomic fluctuations. An increase in oil prices (external demand) is contractionary (expansionary), and the effects dissipate up to three years after the shock.     

Fiscal stimulus and its effects in the European Union

In the wake of the financial and economic crisis Keynesian macroeconomic management has once again come into the spotlight. The following article takes a critical look at the practice of expansionary fiscal policy in the EU’s old member states between 1980 and 2005 in order to answer the question whether fiscal stimulus can be a successful response to the current crisis in both the short and the long run.     

The Prospects for Future Economic Growth in the Euro Area

With a long-term projection of TFP growth of 0.2 per cent, a gradual decline in the work-age population and a static average workweek, we project a "baseline" average real GDP growth rate in the euro area of just 0.6 per cent over the next decade — even if the unemployment rate and investment share of GDP return to their pre-crisis levels by 2020.     

Demand and Supply Shocks in the Caribbean Economies: Implications for Monetary Union

This paper uses the method of structural vector autoregressions to decompose movements of real output and prices into demand and supply innovations for four Caribbean economies: Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana. The aim of the analysis is to assess if these economies could feasibly form part of a Caribbean monetary union. Correlations between the demand and supply innovations are, however, typically low, indicating that monetary union may lead to greater stabilisation problems for these economies.     

Fiscal Rules and Twin Deficits: The Link between Fiscal and External Balances

This paper investigates the relationship between countries' fiscal balances and current accounts with an emphasis on the role of fiscal rules. The direct effect of fiscal policy on the current account via aggregate (import) demand is potentially amplified by indirect effects, materialising through interest rate effects and intergenerational transfers that reduce savings. On the other hand, the implied positive relation between fiscal and external balances is potentially attenuated by offsetting changes in savings through Ricardian equivalence considerations. We expect this attenuation effect to be stronger in countries with more stringent fiscal rules and test this hypothesis using a panel of 73 countries over the period 1985–2012. As with previous studies, we find a positive effect of fiscal balances on the current account, supporting the twin deficit hypothesis. However, the effect of fiscal balances on the current account depends on the stringency of fiscal (budget balance or debt) rules in place; it is reduced by one‐third on average and virtually eliminated for countries with the most stringent fiscal rules.     

东亚共同体及其共同货币问题的探讨

东亚的金融合作,使得预防金融危机,确保东亚经济稳定持续增长成为了中心课题,而确保经济稳定持续增长所必要的是汇兑市场稳定和构建强大的金融系统。在经济相互依赖越来越深的环境下,区域间所要具备的,首先是区域内金融当局之间交换必要的信息,加深通货和金融层面的对话与协调,创建一种区域内的共同货币,此外,加强与美国的协调及与IMF等国际金融机构的调和也是必不可少的的手段,借此也参考欧洲的共同货币—创建欧元的经验。