Financial frictions and optimal stabilization policy in a monetary union

Financial frictions differ across countries and thus cause international differences in the transmission of shocks. This paper shows how the optimal mix of monetary and fiscal policy depends on these country-specific financial frictions. To this end, we build a two-country DSGE-model of a monetary union. Financial frictions are captured by the cost channel approach. We show that the traditional solution to the assignment problem – the common central bank stabilizes the inflation rate at the union level and the national fiscal authorities stabilize the national economies – does not hold in a world with financial frictions. The cost channel decreases the efficiency of monetary policy and increases the need for fiscal stabilization even at the union level. Moreover, the more heterogeneous the union, the more important is fiscal policy in stabilizing shocks. Finally, we evaluate the scenarios in terms of welfare of the representative household.     

European Monetary and Fiscal Policies after the EU Enlargement

This paper examines the design of macroeconomic policies after Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) have joined the EU. We consider scenarios with and without CEECs being members of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and analyze consequences of different intermediate targets for the European Central Bank. For the fiscal policy variables, we assume that the governments of incumbent and new members either refrain from pursuing active stabilization policies or follow either non-cooperative or cooperative activist fiscal policies. Different scenarios are simulated with the macroeconomic McKibbin–Sachs Model (MSG2 Model), and the resulting welfare orderings are determined. They show that the advantages and disadvantages of different policy arrangements depend strongly on the nature of the shock the economies are faced with. Additional macroeconomic noise resulting from the CEECs' membership of the EMU does not seem to be too much of a problem.     

Fiscal restrictions and monetary union: Rationales,repercussions, reforms

We offer a critique of the fiscal preconditions for participation in Stage III of EMU and the Excessive Deficit Procedure of the Maastricht Treaty. We show that the high output costs associated with meeting the fiscal preconditions in Stage II and the incompatibility of the reference values for fiscal policy with other convergence criteria make it unlikely that a mechanical interpretation of those conditions will govern admission to Stage III. Knowledge of this fact will deter governments from undertaking major fiscal adjustments in the first place. Hence, the fiscal criteria of the treaty will not function as an efficient filter for distinguishing countries that are and are not prepared to live with the fiscal consequences of EMU.In Stage III, the function of the Excessive Deficit Procedure is to buttress the European Central Bank's protection from demands for a central bank bailout in the event of a debt crisis in a participating state. We show that other aspects of EU fiscal structure, namely the retention by member states of the bulk of their own revenue-raising capacity, should suffice to restrain the demand for a central bank bailout and the pressure on the ECB to supply it. Until political union follows monetary union, leading to the centralization of fiscal functions and revenu-raising capacity in the EU itself, the Excessive Deficit Procedure will be redundant. If there remains any reason to doubt the credibility of the no-bailout rule, then the best way to buttress it is directly, by further insulating the ECB from pressure to extend a bailout.If it is felt that policy in EU member states is biased toward excessive deficits, then the appropriate place to address this problem is at the national level. A limited approach would involve steps to insure that negotiations over the budget occur in the context of a firm general constraint on the overall level of spending. A more far-reaching reform would involve the creation of National Debt Boards to offset the prevailing bias.     

United we stand: on the macroeconomics of a Fiscal union

In this paper, we apply dynamic tracking games to macroeconomic policy making in a monetary union. We use a small stylized nonlinear two-country macroeconomic model of a monetary union for analyzing the interactions between two fiscal (governments: “core” and “periphery”) and one monetary (central bank) policy makers, assuming different objective functions of these decision makers. Using the OPTGAME algorithm, we calculate numerical solutions for cooperative (Pareto optimal) and non-cooperative games (feedback Nash). We show how the policy makers react to adverse demand shocks. We investigate the consequences of three scenarios: decentralized fiscal policies controlled by independent governments (the present situation), centralized fiscal policy (a fiscal union) with an independent central bank (pure fiscal union), and a fully centralized monetary and fiscal union. For the latter two scenarios, we demonstrate the importance of different assumptions about the joint objective function corresponding to different weights for the two governments in the design of the common fiscal policy. We show that a fiscal union with weights corresponding to the number of states in each of the blocs gives better results than non-cooperative policy making. When one bloc dominates the fiscal union, decentralized policies yield lower overall losses than the pure fiscal union and the monetary and fiscal union.     

The Impact of 2007/08 Financial Crisis on the Stability and Enlargement of the EMU

Before 2007/08, the European Monetary Union (EMU) was expected to be enlarged on schedule, but the European sovereign debt problem, triggered by the exogenous US sub‐prime crisis, not only has revealed the EMU's fiscal coordination failure, but also has weakened regional financial integration. The stagnation of financial integration will therefore increase the cost of sustaining a monetary union, which in turn slows EMU enlargement and ruins the reputation of the euro. This paper aims to measure the damage to financial integration and to provide a more precise answer on real interest rate parity (RIP) convergence. Our estimation indicates that RIP between the EMU and some accession candidates is still valid after the interruptions of the financial crises. However, convergence of real interest rates cannot be achieved until 2030. This implies the EMU authority must strengthen regional financial integration to solidify the EMU and then be able to re‐start enlargement.     

Deficit sustainability and inflation in EMU: An analysis from the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level

Price determination theory typically focuses on the role of monetary policy, while the role of fiscal policy is usually neglected. From a different point of view, the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level takes into account monetary and fiscal policy interactions and assumes that fiscal policy may determine the price level, even if monetary authorities pursue an inflation targeting strategy. In this paper we try to test empirically whether the time path of the government budget in EMU countries would have affected price level determination. Our results point to the sustainability of fiscal policy in all the EMU countries but Finland, although no firm conclusions can be drawn about the prevalence of either monetary or fiscal dominance.     

Optimal Currency Areas Scottish Economic Society/Royal Bank of Scotland Annual Lecture, 1999

Microeconomic efficiency and market transparency argue in favour of UK membership in EMU and for Scotland’s membership in the UK monetary union and also in EMU. UK seigniorage (government revenues from money issuance) would be boosted by EMU membership. Lender of last resort arrangements would not be substantially affected by UK membership in EMU. The UK is too small and too open to be an optimal currency area. The same point applies even more emphatically to Scotland. The ‘one‐size‐fits‐all’, ‘asymmetric shocks’ and ‘cyclical divergence’ objections to UK membership are based on the misapprehension that independent national monetary policy, and the associated nominal exchange rate flexibility, can be used effectively to offset or even neutralise asymmetric shocks. This ‘fine tuning delusion’ is compounded by a failure to understand that, under a high degree of international financial integration, market‐determined exchange rates are primarily a source of shocks and instability. Instead, opponents of UK membership in EMU view exchange rate flexibility as an effective buffer for adjusting to asymmetric shocks originating elsewhere. I know of no evidence that supports such an optimistic reading of what exchange rate flexibility can deliver under conditions of very high international financial capital mobility. The economic arguments for immediate UK membership in EMU, at an appropriate entry rate, are overwhelming. Monetary union raises important constitutional and political issues. It involves a further surrender of national sovereignty to a supranational institution, the ECB/ESCB. It is essential that this transfer of national sovereignty be perceived as legitimate by those affected by it. In addition, the citizens of the UK have become accustomed to a high standard of openness and accountability of their central bank since it gained operational independence in 1997. The ECB/ESCB must be held to the same high standard, and, while there are grounds for optimism, there still is some way to go there.     

Measuring fiscal spillovers in EMU and beyond: A Global VAR approach

This paper identifies and measures fiscal spillovers in the EU countries empirically using a global vector autoregression (GVAR) model. Our aim was to look at the sign and the absolute values of fiscal spillovers in a countrywise perspective and at the time profile (impulse response) of the impacts of fiscal shocks. We find moderate spillover effects of fiscal policy shocks originating in Germany and France. However, there is significant variation regarding the magnitude of the spillovers on individual destination countries and country clusters. Furthermore, we find some evidence that German or French fiscal spillovers are stronger on EMU than on non‐EMU countries.     

The political economy under monetary union: has the euro made a difference?

Economic and monetary union (EMU) has transformed Europe and has created an integrated pan-European economy. Much research has focused on understanding this integration process and what benefits and costs it entails. This paper identifies a political economy channel of EMU as the monetary union implies that member states had to transfer or at least curtail their policy autonomy in several areas, such as monetary policy and fiscal policy. The paper shows that EMU has helped reduce the impact of political shocks on the domestic economy of member states but magnified the transmission of political shocks within the euro area. Equally importantly, economies with weak domestic policies and institutions exhibited a significantly higher sensitivity to domestic political shocks before EMU, but not thereafter. While this may entail that EMU has brought benefits to countries with weaker policies and institutions by insulating them from adverse political developments at home, a potential drawback is that it may provide weaker market discipline for domestic political stability.
— Marcel Fratzscher and Livio Stracca     

Business Cycle Comovement and Labor Market Institutions: An Empirical Investigation

This paper examines the empirical link between labor market institutions and international business cycle synchronization. Using a data panel of 20 OECD countries over the 1964–2003 period, we evaluate how cross‐country labor market heterogeneity affects business cycle comovement. Our estimation strategy controls for a large set of possible factors influencing cross‐country GDP correlation, which allows a comparison of our results with those found in previous studies. We find that bilateral trade, trade similarity, monetary and fiscal convergence, as well as EMU membership lead to more synchronized cycles. Our results show that labor market regulations affect the extent of business cycle synchronization. Disparities in employment protection laws and direct taxation tend to lower international comovement while divergence in union density, unemployment benefits, and indirect taxation enhance cross‐country correlations. The level of labor market regulations also matters. Heavier employment taxes are found to raise GDP comovement.     

Multiple Wage Bargaining Systems in the Single European Currency Area

Little attention in the EMU literature has been paid to the interaction between centralbank monetary rules and systems of collective wage bargaining. Analytically andempirically, coordinated wage bargaining systems respond with real wage restraintto non-accommodating monetary policy. Since wage determination is dominated bycollective bargaining in all the EMU member states and wage coordination within themember states has grown since 1980, this is a topic of potential importance. In particular, the replacement of the Bundesbank, directly targeting German inflation, by an ECB targeting European inflation has removed a major institutional support of wage restraint in Germany. The consequences of this for EMU are worked out under two scenarios, that inflation expectations will be generated by ECB monetary policy and that they will reflect German inflation outcomes. Possible institutional developments are discussed including government-union bargains. The Bundesbank has also played a major role in maintaining fiscal rectitude by targeting excess fiscal deficits in Germany: again its replacement by the ECB – targeting (if at all) European rather than German fiscal policy – loosens fiscal constraints. For underlying structural reasons therefore, it is possible that Germany and other EMU countries will move to a period of fiscal activism with wage restraint and low inflation purchased through social contract negotiations.     

Macroeconomic Stabilization in the EMU: Rules Versus Institutions

This paper investigates the macroeconomic implications of different regimes of international fiscal coordination and monetary‐fiscal cooperation in a monetary union with independent fiscal authorities, that act strategically vis‐à‐vis a common central bank. In the presence of other policy goals than cyclical stabilization, such as interest rate smoothing and fiscal stability, we show that coordination among national fiscal authorities can reduce output and inflation volatility relative to the non‐cooperative setting in specific circumstances, as in case of demand disturbances, while turning potentially counterproductive otherwise. The adverse effects of union‐wide coordinated fiscal measures can be attenuated in a regime of global coordination, namely, when a centralized fiscal stabilization is coordinated with the common monetary policy as well.     

Monetary and Fiscal Policy Rules in the EMU

Abstract. This paper studies the design and effects of monetary and fiscal policy in the euro area. To do so, a stylized two‐region model of monetary and fiscal policy rules in the EMU is built. We analyse how monetary and fiscal rules affect the adjustment dynamics in the model. Both the effects on the individual countries and on the EMU aggregate economy are studied. Three aspects play an important role in the analysis: (i) the consequences of alternative monetary and fiscal policy rules, (ii) the consequences of asymmetries between EMU countries (asymmetries in macroeconomic shocks and macroeconomic structures), and (iii) the role of alternative degrees of backward‐ and forward‐looking behaviour in consumer decisions and inflation expectations.     

MACROECONOMIC STABILIZATION POLICIES IN THE EMU: SPILLOVERS, ASYMMETRIES AND INSTITUTIONS

This paper studies the institutional design of the coordination of macroeconomic stabilization policies within a monetary union in the framework of linear quadratic differential games. A central role in the analysis plays the partitioned game approach of the endogenous coalition formation literature. The specific policy recommendations in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) context depend on the particular characteristics of the shocks and the economic structure. In the case of a common shock, fiscal coordination or full policy coordination is desirable. When anti‐symmetric shocks are considered, fiscal coordination improves the performance but full policy coordination does not produce further gains in policymakers' welfare.     

Structural reforms,fiscal consolidation and external rebalancing in monetary union: A model-based analysis

The paper analyses the impact of structural reforms on external positions in monetary union in a 3-region version of QUEST III. Wage cost moderation and fiscal consolidation improve the current account balance in the medium term, but positive income effects tend to offset the initial increase in the long term. The general pattern is robust across alternative levels of initial foreign indebtedness. While lasting imbalance correction requires a contraction of debt-financed domestic demand, supply-side reform can mitigate the associated output contraction. A scenario is given as illustration that would reverse the 20% competitiveness loss in the EMU periphery during the 2000s and reduce foreign and government debt by 30% and 50% of GDP within ten years.     

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.     

FiMod — A DSGE model for fiscal policy simulations

This paper develops a medium-scale dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium (DSGE) model for fiscal policy simulations. Relative to existing models of this type, our model incorporates two important features. First, we consider a two-country monetary union structure, which makes it well suited to simulate fiscal measures by relatively large countries in a currency area. Second, we provide a notable degree of disaggregation on the government expenditures side, by explicitly distinguishing between (productivity-enhancing) public investment, public purchases and the public sector wage bill. In addition, we consider a labor market characterized by search and matching frictions, which allows to analyze the response of equilibrium unemployment to fiscal measures. In order to illustrate some of its applications, and motivated by recent policy debate in the Euro Area, we calibrate the model to Spain and the rest of the area and simulate a number of fiscal consolidation scenarios. We find that, in terms of output and employment losses, fiscal consolidation is the least damaging when achieved by reducing the public sector wage bill, whereas it is most damaging when carried out by cutting public investment.     

Accounting and the European single currency

This paper considers some accounting problems in the period leading up to the introduction of the European single currency, the euro. Taking into account two different scenarios regarding the economic and monetary union (EMU) from its first stage, different aspects concerning the area of accounting have been revised. These include exchange differences, financial states comparison, financial states conversion, increase in capital, discriminatory treatment of active and passive monetary and nonmonetary assets, accounting records, annual accounts or rounding. This paper will point out some of the problematic areas that may arise from the introduction of the euro. Although several aspects have been taken into account, as the EMU approaches, many other issues will need to be discussed.     

Co‐Movement Towards a Currency or Monetary Union? An Empirical Study for New Zealand

This paper analyses whether New Zealand would be ready to form a currency or monetary union with either Australia, the 11 EU countries that are members of the EMU, Japan, or the US, if the criteria that have been used by researchers for the EMU are applied. The analysis is an empirical study with data from the mid 1980s to 1998, using cointegration techniques to search for co-movement and convergence in key economic variables: interest rates, inflation rates, exchange rates, real GDP, and current-account/GDP ratios.     

Compatibility between monetary and fiscal policy under EMU

The debate over the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) as a part of European Monetary Union, has highlighted the need to assess the extent to which fiscal policies of union members should be constrained as a pre-requisite for price stability within the union. In this paper, we develop a two country open economy model, where each country has overlapping generations of finitely lived consumers who supply labour to imperfectly competitive firms which can only change their prices infrequently. We examine the case where the two countries have formed a monetary union, but where the fiscal authorities remain independent. We show that the fiscal response required to ensure stability of the real debt stock is greater when consumers are not infinitely lived. In principle, this allows for some compensating behaviour between governments, but we show that the scope for compensation is limited. The monetary authority can abandon its active targeting of inflation to stabilise the debt of at most one fiscal authority, and any other combination of policies will either result in price level indeterminacy and/or indefinite transfers of wealth between the two economies. Finally, in a series of simulations we show that fiscal shocks have limited impact on output and inflation provided the fiscal authorities meet the (weak) requirements of fiscal solvency. However, when monetary policy is forced to abandon its active targeting of inflation, then fiscal shocks have a much greater impact on both output and inflation.