On the benefits of fiscal policy coordination in a currency union: a note

It is quite often claimed by politicians that a common currency makes it beneficial to be also endowed with a common fiscal policy. However, if fiscal policy can reasonably be considered to be a source of shocks, national fiscal policies which are steered independently from each other are generally preferable because they allow the possibility to diversify macroeconomic risks. Abstracting from automatic stabilizers, this view is valid independent on whether the ECB targets money growth or interest rates.

Business Cycle Desynchronisation: Amplitude and Beta vs. Co-movement

A high degree of correlation among the business cycles of individual countries is usually seen as a key criterion for an optimum currency area. However, the elasticity with which countries react to the common cycle is equally important. A country with a non-unitary growth elasticity relative to the common area will experience cyclical divergences at the peak and trough of the common cycle. Despite being characterised by highly correlated business cycles, the euro area suffers from widely differing amplitudes.     

Transparenz und Forward Guidance: Stimulierung der Volkswirtschaft in der Eurozone?

The author delivers details on whether and how the effectiveness of the ECB’s policies can be improved through more transparency and “forward guidance”. Is publishing the minutes of Council meetings really a good idea? How should we assess the publication of the details of who has voted (and in what way) in the meetings? Is the ECB plagued by deficiencies in transparency, with an eye on the bank’s steadily growing responsibilities? Should the ECB stick to the instrument of “forward guidance” even beyond the crisis period? How predictable and assessable can and must monetary policy be? Can central banks endowed with too much guidance become a source of volatility? The ECB will adopt banking surveillance in the euro area: do particular transparency and accountability obligations result from this? And if yes, how can they be fulfilled? Finally, the author assesses the limits of the transparency and communication of central banks.     

Towards a European Social Union: Impacts on Labor Markets in the Acceding Countries

A new social dimension of the EU has been established in the last decade. This paper discusses the effect of an adoption of this EU social law on future labor market performance in the CEECs. For this purpose, we draw an analogy between the policies vis-a-vis the CEECs and those regarding East Germany and Southern Italy. We conclude that the adoption of inefficient EU social and labor policy regulations entails risks for CEEC employment similar to those materialized in the latter regions. This view is substantiated by a public choice analysis of why the old EU members will want to impose the Social Charter even though it will harm the new members.     

Emerging and small open economies,unconventional monetary policy and exchange rates – a survey

At the outset of the Great Recession emerging in 2007, central banks of major-currency economies have adopted non-standard monetary policies. We examine whether and to what extent these measures pose a challenge to central banking in emerging and small open economies. In particular we assess how global liquidity spillovers caused by major central banks affect the economic dynamics of emerging and small open economies. In this respect, economies which are close to or even at the periphery of major-currency economies are particularly prone to “unbalanced” real exchange rate dynamics. In the short run, corresponding level and volatility effects in key relative prices may endanger financial stability in the recipient country. The long-term effects include a metamorphosis of the anchoring of private-sector inflation expectations into a perilous tightrope act in central banking of these economies.     

The dollar-euro exchange rate and macroeconomic fundamentals: a time-varying coefficient approach

This paper investigates the temporal stability of the relationship between the Deutschmark/US dollar exchange rate and macroeconomic fundamentals. We use monthly data from 1975:01 to 2007:12. Applying a novel time-varying coefficient estimation approach, we come up with some interesting properties of our empirical model. Firstly, there is no stable long-run equilibrium relationship among fundamentals and exchange rates, since the breakdown of Bretton Woods. Secondly, there are no recurring regimes, i.e. across different regimes, either the coefficient values for the same fundamentals differ or the significance differs. Thirdly, there is no regime into which no fundamentals enter. Fourthly, the deviations resulting from the stepwise cointegrating relationship act as a significant error-correction mechanism. In other words, we are able to show that fundamentals play an important role in determining the exchange rate, but their impact differs significantly across different subperiods.     

Bootstrapping rank statistics

The bootstrap, which provides powerful approximations for many classes of statistics, is studied for simple linear rank statistics employing bounded and smooth score functions. To verify consistency we view a rank statistic as a statistic induced by a statistical functional ψ which is evaluated at a pair of dependent signed measures. Thus, we can apply the von Mises method to verify asymptotic results for the bootstrap. The strong consistency of the bootstrap distribution estimator is derived for the bootstrap based on resampling from the original data. Further, the residual bootstrap is studied. The accuracy of the bootstrap approximations for small sample sizes is studied by simulations. The simulations indicate that the bootstrap provides better results than a normal approximation.