The forthcoming creation of a single European currency area will likely have farreaching impacts on the competitive position of European industries, as a result of a decline in transaction costs and currency risks for intra-European trade. These impacts will take place independent of the...

To study the effect of the euro on international goods trade one typically estimates a panel model for the level of trade. Trade levels increase over time, and we show that this is not fully explained by the included regressors. Because the euro is only present at the end of the sample, this may...

A major economic reason for the introduction of the euro was its supposedly positive effect on intra-EMU trade. Existing studies examine this suspicion indirectly using non-EMU data and report ambiguous results. We estimate the euro-effect directly from data that include EMU observations. Using...

Which ways and means are available for the macroeconomic and fiscal coordination and/or integration within the EMU-framework? Which are the pros and cons of these scenarios? This paper combines economic theory, empirical analysis and insights regarding EMU’s institutional history in order to...

We analyze the political economy of monetary unification among countries with different quality of institutions. Countries with stronger institutions have lower public spending and better investment incentives, even under a stronger currency. Governments under weaker institutions spend more so...