Increasingly, in regional agreements, large economies, e.g. U.S. and E.U., offer lower trade barriers in exchange for cooperation by small economies in environmental, intellectual property and other issues. What is the effect of such agreements on multilateral trade liberalization? We show that,...

Now that four years have passed since the introduction of the euro as a commercial currency, it has become possible to assess many arguments made in the abstract during the 1990s about the implications of monetary union. This contribution does precisely that. In brief, the euro zone still falls...

It is well known that if international linkages are relatively small, the potential gains to international monetary policy coordination are typically quite limited. But what if goods and financial markets are tightly linked? Is it then problematic if countries unilaterally design their...

We investigate how the exchange rate regime influences economic linkages across countries. We divide the exchange rate regime into three classifications: currency union, peg and floating exchange rates. Unlike most studies solely focusing on the relationship between anchor and client countries,...

We are interested on assessing the effectiveness of the Bank of Greece (BoG) exchange rate policy, to achieve the objective of adjusting balance of payments des-equilibrium, during the period 1983:1-1995:12. The traditional theory of the balance of payments adjustment process through exchange...

In this paper we extend the macroeconometric model developed in Bagnai (2004) by linking it to a submodel for the Japanese economy, and we utilize this extended model to investigate several hypotheses of reduction in the US twin deficits. The Japanese submodel is specified and estimated along...

The IMF classifications of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) exchange rate arrange-ments are heterogeneous. While one group of countries reports tight pegs to the euro, a second group seems to have moved toward (more) exchange rate flexibility. Based on the recent dis- cussion about the...

This paper assesses the contribution of the European Central Bank (ECB) to Germany’s ongoing economic crisis, a vicious circle of decline in which the country has become stuck since the early 1990s. It is argued that the ECB continues the Bundesbank tradition of asymmetric policymaking: the...

We assess the correlation of supply and demand shocks between current countries in the euro area and EU accession candidates from 1993/1995 to 2002. Supply and demand shocks are recovered from estimated structural VAR models of output growth and inflation. Notably, the economic slowdown between...

This paper investigates the extent of per-capita income convergence in regional integration initiatives. Panel unit root testing is performed on 28 regional groupings. There is evidence of convergence in South- South integration, but this might be taking place to the bottom.