Vulnerability to Shocks in EMU: 1991–2004 (in English)

The authors analyze the nature of economic shocks hitting European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) member countries from 1991 to 2004, as well as for two sub-periods before and after the launch of EMU. To this end, they first evaluate the relative importance of symmetric versus asymmetric shocks, and then extract their temporary component. Their final aim would be assessing the vulnerability of EMU to transitory asymmetric shocks, that is, to the most harmful situation for the operation of a monetary union. Overall, the authors´ results show that in the period of analysis, symmetric shocks predominated over asymmetric shocks, but the temporary component of asymmetric shocks was higher than that of symmetric shocks.