The Euro and Internal Economic Policy Coordination

This paper reviews, mainly from an institutional angle, the objectives, forms, scope, levels, implementation and challenges involved for internal economic policy coordination after the introduction of the euro on 1 January 1999. In particular, it identifies six different aspects of coordination (procedures, exchange of information, analytical framework, monitoring, policy interactions and joint determination of policies) and analyses the rationale for coordination in eight different policy areas. After presenting some of the challenges lying ahead, the paper concludes that although an appropriate institutional framework seems in place, it still has to undergo its baptism of fire.     

German Exports to the Euro Area

This paper analyzes the determinants of German exports to the euro area, which is the biggest market for German products. Three conditional error-correction models based on regionally disaggregated data are developed. One specification includes EMU industrial production and a real external value based on consumer prices, the other two use different EMU investment aggregates, the orresponding real external values and a proxy for European market integration to explain exports. The models perform equally well in a number of diagnostic tests. For short-term forecasts, however, the model using industrial production seems to be the best, since it outperforms the other models in terms of one-step ahead out-of-sample forecasts.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual 2002 congress of the Verein für Socialpolitik.     

Interest Rate Pass-Through: Empirical Results for the Euro Area

Abstract. This paper empirically examines the interest rate pass‐through at the euro area level. The focus is on the pass‐through of official interest rates, approximated by the overnight interest rate, to longer‐term market interest rates, which, in turn, are a proxy for the marginal costs for banks to attract deposits or grant loans, and therefore passed through to retail bank interest rates. Empirical results, on the basis of a (vector) error‐correction and vector autoregressive model, suggest that the pass‐through of official interest to market interest rates is complete for money market interest rates up to three months, but not for market interest rates with longer maturities. Furthermore, the immediate pass‐through of changes in market interest rates to bank deposit and lending rates is found to be at most 50%, whereas the final pass‐through is typically found to be close to 100%, in particular for lending rates. Empirical results for a sub‐sample starting in January 1999 show qualitatively similar findings and are supportive of a quicker interest rate pass‐through since the introduction of the euro. It is shown that the difference between the adjustment speed of bank deposit and lending rates (typically around one versus three months since the common monetary policy) can to a large extent significantly be explained by credit risk considerations.     

Measuring comparative advantages in the Euro Area

A core principle in international economics is that the specialization of an economy on the basis of its comparative advantages leads to gains from trade. However, there is no empirical work directly linking comparative advantages and export specialization. This paper investigates whether the comparative advantages of countries have driven their export specialization. Panel unit root tests, panel cointegration tests, and panel causality tests are used to examine this relationship. We also use panel estimation methods that mitigate heterogeneity, cross-sectional dependence and endogeneity. The empirical analysis is based on annual Euro Area data for the period 1995–2016. Empirical results indicate that comparative advantages positively affect export specialization. Heterogeneous panel causality analysis results support that there is unidirectional panel causality running from comparative advantages to export specialization in most countries; and a reverse causal relation in Greece, Italy, and Portugal. Finally, we detect bidirectional causality in Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, and Slovakia.     

Norman's Lament: The Greek and Euro Area Crisis in Historical Perspective

This article uses original and secondary archival sources to examine the value of the distinction between creditor and debtor states in explaining the behaviour of domestic elites in international and European macroeconomic and monetary cooperation, compared to variables like size and trade. It highlights the paradox and tension between changes in institutional forms and stronger incentives to cooperate (Montagu Norman's ‘new Europe’) and persisting patterns in strategic behaviour across space and over time. Central to this continuity is a fundamental asymmetry of power between creditor and debtor states. The imbalances that underpin creditor–debtor state relations also reveal the structural underpinnings of arguments from economic principle, ‘who argues what’ and receptiveness to economic ideas and thinkers. Not least, the case studies and arguments in the article offer fresh and different insights into British and French attitudes to European coordination.     

The Global Financial Crisis and Stochastic Convergence in the Euro Area

This paper analyzes the issue of convergence in the original Euro Area countries, and assesses the effect of the global financial crisis on the process of convergence. In particular, we consider whether the global financial crisis pulled the 12 economies of the Euro Area together or pushed them apart. We investigate the dynamics of stochastic convergence of the original Euro Area countries for inflation rates, nominal interest rates, and real interest rates. We test for convergence relative to Germany, taken as the benchmark for core EU standards, using monthly data over the period January 2001 to September 2010. We examine, in a time-series framework, three different profiles of the convergence process: linear convergence, nonlinear convergence, and linear segmented convergence. Our findings both contradict and support convergence. Stochastic convergence implies the rejection of a unit root in the inflation rate, nominal interest rate, and real interest rate differentials. We find that the differentials are consistent with a unit-root hypothesis when the alternative hypothesis is a stationary process with a linear trend. We frequently, but not always, reject the unit-root hypothesis when the alternative is a stationary process with a broken trend. We also note that the current financial crisis plays a significant role in dating the breaks.     

Regional output growth synchronisation with the Euro Area

This paper investigates the patterns and determinants of the co-movement of economic activity between regions in the European Union and the Euro Area. We use a panel dataset of 208 regions over the period 1989–2002 and estimate a system of simultaneous equations to analyse the impact of regional trade integration, industry specialisation and exchange rate volatility on regional output growth synchronisation with the Euro Area. We find that deeper trade integration with the Euro Area had a strong direct positive effect on the synchronisation of regional output growth with the Euro Area. Industrial specialisation and exchange rate volatility were sources of cyclical divergence. Industrial specialisation had however an indirect positive effect on regional output growth synchronisation via its positive effect on trade integration, while exchange rate volatility had an indirect additional negative effect on regional output growth synchronisation by reducing trade integration.     

Coincident and Leading Indicators for the Euro Area

This paper proposes a new way to compute a coincident and a leading indicator of economic activity. Our methodology, based on Forni, Hallin, Lippi and Reichlin (2000), reconciles dynamic principal components analysis with dynamic factor analysis. It allows us to extract indicators from a large panel of economic variables (many variables for many countries). The procedure is used to estimate coincident and leading indicators for the EURO area. Unlike other methods used in the literature, the procedure takes into consideration the cross-country as well as the within-country correlation structure and exploit all information on dynamic cross-correlation.     

欧元区成员国通胀差异成因研究

在欧元区内部,不同国家之间的通胀率存在不容忽视的差别。欧元区各经济体间究竟为什么会存在差别如此之大的通胀率呢?什么因素及在多大程度上影响了通胀率的差异?文章从巴拉萨—萨缪尔森效应、价格的收敛效应、输入性通胀、本国要素市场结构差异、本国财政政策和经济周期等六个方面,使用实证数据和面板数据回归探讨了这些问题。     

Asymmetry and the Problem of Aggregation in the Euro Area

This paper highlights the implications for a single monetary policy when key economic relationships are nonlinear or asymmetric at a disaggregate level. Using data for the EU and OECD countries we show that there are considerable non-linearities and asymmetries in the Phillips and Okun curves. High unemployment has relatively limited effect in pulling inflation down while low unemployment can be much more effective in driving it up. Downturns in the economy are both more rapid and sustained in driving unemployment up than recoveries are in bringing it down. There is considerable variety in these relationships and IS curves across not just countries but also sectors and regions.     

Single currency and fiscal performance: the early Euro Area in perspective

We examine how exchange rate regimes affect fiscal discipline by investigating European countries as they transitioned from flexible to fully fixed exchange rates under the Euro. We apply the synthetic control method to estimate, for each Eurozone country, its counterfactual budget stance under flexible rates. Our evidence strongly suggests that fixing exchange rates negatively impacted negatively fiscal discipline. However, effects were not homogeneous, as they were mediated by political factors. For example, countries where policymakers faced a longer political horizon and operated within a more cohesive political environment, managed to perform better in terms of fiscal discipline.     

Which News Moves the Euro Area Bond Market?

Abstract. This paper explores a long dataset (1999–2005) of intraday prices on German long-term bond futures and examines market responses to major macroeconomic announcements and ECB monetary policy releases. German bond markets tend to react more strongly to the surprise component in US macro releases compared with aggregated and national euro area and UK releases, and the strength of those reactions to US releases has increased over the period considered. We also document that the numbers of German unemployed workers consistently have been known to investors before official releases.     

Monetary and Fiscal Policy Interactions in the Euro Area

The problem of monetary and fiscal policy interactions is an important issue for the euro area, since the individual member states of the EMU are responsible for their fiscal policies but monetary policy is pursued by a single monetary authority, the ECB. This paper is concerned with empirical evidence on monetary and fiscal policy interactions in the euro area. We first explore fiscal regimes with a VAR model and find empirical evidence that a non-Ricardian fiscal policy has been pursued in both France and Germany. As an example, we then study how one member state of the EMU, namely, Italy, is responding to the common monetary policy with its fiscal policy and find that Italian fiscal policy seemed to be counteractive to the common monetary policy between 1979 and 1998. In order to study monetary and fiscal policy interactions in a more general way, we explore time-varying interactions by estimating a State-Space model with Markov-switching for some Euro-area countries. There appear to be some regime changes in monetary and fiscal policy interactions in France and Germany, but the interactions between the two policies are not strong. Moreover, the two policies have not been accommodative but counteractive to each other. Finally we explore forward-looking behavior in policy interactions and find that expectations do not seem to have played an important role in the policy designs.     

Distributional consequences of asset price inflation in the Euro Area

We study the distributional consequences of housing price, bond price and equity price increases for Euro Area households using data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). The capital gains from bond price and equity price increases turn out to be concentrated among relatively few households, while the median household strongly benefits from housing price increases. The capital gains from bond price increases (relative to household net wealth) do not correlate with household net wealth (or income). Bond price increases thus leave net wealth inequality largely unchanged. In contrast, equity price increases largely benefit the top end of the net wealth (and income) distribution, thus amplify net wealth inequality. Housing price increases display a hump shaped pattern over the net wealth distribution, with the poorest and richest households benefitting least, but there exists considerable heterogeneity across Euro Area countries. The ECB's OMT announcements over the summer of 2012 had quantitatively similar distributional implications as an unexpected loosening of the policy rate by about 175 basis points.     

The Internal Organization of the Firm, Transaction Costs, and Macroeconomic Growth

This articleanalyzes the links between the internal organization of the firmand macroeconomic growth. We present a Schumpeterian growth modelin which firms face agency costs due to the existence of asymmetriesof information and the formation of vertical collusions insidethose firms. To respond to the threat of collusion, optimal collusion-proofincentive contracts depend on the efficiency of collusive sidecontracting within organizations. Collusion affects thereforethe firms' profitability, the incentives to innovate, and, finally,the stationary equilibrium growth rate of the economy. On theother hand, when the growth rate is small, the prospects of long-termrelationships within firms increase the agents' incentives toinvest in a better collusive technology. We then discuss thetwo-way relationships between the structure of internal transactioncosts, organizational technologies, and macroeconomic growth.     

Internal Quota-Allocation Schemes and the Costs of the Mfa*

This paper suggests that schemes used within developing countries to allocate textile export quota among domestic producers typically have more severe negative effects on developing-country economic performance than the MFA export quotas themselves. We summarize allocation schemes in 16 countries, highlighting common “lock-in” and “rent-dissipation” effects of such schemes. We then use a global general-equilibrium model to evaluate the effects of MFA removal with and without these additional effects. Results indicate that estimates of gains to developing countries from an MFA removal increase sharply when internal quota-allocation schemes are taken into account.     

Inflation Dynamics in the Euro Area and the Role of Expectations

This paper examines the empirical performance of the New Keynesian Phillips curve and its hybrid specification in the euro area. Instead of imposing rational expectations, direct measures, i.e. OECD forecasts, are used as empirical proxies for economic agents’ inflation expectations. Real marginal costs are proxied by three alternative measures. The results suggest that once the rational expectations hypothesis is relaxed and directly measured expectations are used, the European inflation process can be modeled using the forward-looking New Keynesian Phillips curve. However, when allowing for possible non-rationalities in expectations, inflation can be modeled more accurately by the hybrid Phillips curve with the additional lagged inflation term. In this approach, output gap turns out to be at least as good as labor income share as a proxy for real marginal cost. Moreover, the inflation process seems to have become more forward-looking in the recent years of low and stable inflation.The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Bank of Finland. Special thanks are due to the editor, two anonymous referees, Juha Tarkka, Jouko Vilmunen and Matti Virén for useful comments. I am also grateful to David Mayes and Geoffrey Wood for helpful suggestions and to Heli Tikkunen for excellent research assistance. For their constructive comments, I would also thank participants in the conference on the Eurosystem Inflation Persistence Network at the ECB, which was held in Frankfurt in December 2003.     

Real Effective Exchange Rate Misalignment in the Euro Area: A Counterfactual Analysis

The European debt crisis has revealed severe imbalances within the Euro area, sparking a debate about the magnitude of those imbalances, in particular concerning real effective exchange rate misalignments. We use synthetic matching to construct a counterfactual economy for each member state in order to identify the degree of these misalignments. We find that crisis countries are best described as a combination of advanced and emerging economies. Comparing the actual real effective exchange rate with those of the counterfactuals gives evidence of misalignments before the outbreak of the crisis: all peripheral countries appear strongly and significantly overvalued.     

The Liquidity Premium in the Money Market: A Comparison of the German Mark Period and the Euro Area

Abstract. This paper investigates to what extent the expectations hypothesis of the term structure (EHTS) of interest rates receives some support since the launch of the European single currency. Empirical evidence shows that in general this theory applies to most European countries, and to Germany in particular. The objective of this paper thus is twofold. First, the EHTS for the German money market and for a larger sample including the German mark period and the euro money market is tested in order to check whether the results for the former are affected by the new financial environment since January 1999. Second, the implications of the results for the monetary policy assessment are discussed. We estimate cointegrating vector autoregressive models in order to quantify the level of the liquidity premium. The results suggest that financial markets do not consider the monetary policy of the European Central Bank simply as the one prevailing during the German period.