The paper reviews the arguments for and against monetary union among the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council - the United Arab Emirates, the State of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar and the State of Kuwait. Both technical economic arguments...

According to the traditional 'optimum currency area' approach, the case for adopting a common currency is stronger if the countries are subject to relatively similar output shocks. This Paper takes a different approach and highlights the fact that high exchange rate volatility may as well signal...

Existing evidence shows that the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has reduced the cost of capital for firms in the euro area. We study the impact of the adoption of the euro in January 1999 by 11 countries in Europe on the firms’ investment rates, and show that the investment results are...

In this Paper we study the changes in corporate valuation induced by the formation of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in Europe. We use corporate-level data from ten countries that adopted the euro, the three EU countries that did not join EMU, as well as Norway and Switzerland. We show that...

This Paper uses an overlapping generations model to analyse monetary policy in a two-country model with asymmetric shocks. Agents insure against risk through the exchange of a complete set of real securities. Each central bank is able to commit to the contingent monetary policy rule that...

In this paper we present a model for the optimal composition of a federal or supra-national committee. The involvement of regional (national) entities in federal committees is typically motivated by their knowledge of regional information about the state of the economy. Using this argument we...

Regional integration for at least the last sixty years has focused on trade integration. Balassa’s canonical taxonomy of regional trading arrangements is often interpreted as a sequence from free trade area through customs union and common market to economic union. In the 1980s the concept of...

This Paper empirically studies the effect of instrumental and institutional stabilization of the exchange rate on the integration of goods markets. An instrumental stabilization of the exchange rate is accomplished through intervention in the foreign exchange market, or by monetary policies. An...

This paper explores the dominant role of politics in decisions made by euro area governments during the crisis. Decisions that appear to have been driven by local political considerations to the detriment of the euro area as a whole are discussed. The domination of politics over economics has...

This empirical study of the impact of EMU on capital market integration and consumption smoothing comes to three conclusions: first, EMU promotes members’ holdings of foreign assets and foreign liabilities; second, no benefits of consumption smoothing result; third, EU membership, not a single...