Widespread concern over real effects of EMU is consistent with new Keynesian approaches to macroeconomic fluctuations, but more difficult to reconcile with a real business cycle (RBC) paradigm. Using a model with frictions as a point of departure, I argue that nominal price rigidity in Europe is...

Most of the empirical studies dealing with international business cycles have disregarded the credibility issues that play an important role in the decision to join or not a monetary union. Most of empirical applications based on asymmetric shocks have failed to account for these aspects. In...

The concept of integrated stochastic processes is widely used in empirical macroeconomics; and cointegration analysis is an important framework to analyze economic time series both in single equation and in system approaches. This framework is not only suited to study the relationships between...

The behavior of the dollar/euro exchange rate is modeled using a monetary model of the exchange rate. The econometric analysis is complicated by the short sample span of actual euro data available for analysis. Hence, data on a "synthetic" euro are used. The assumptions underlying the monetary...

The conditions under which European monetary policy is likely to be conducted are investigated by means of multi-variate time series modelling using aggregated data of all eleven European Monetary Union member states. A cointegration analysis identifies two stable long-run relationships within a...

Multilateral Consultations are a new tool of multilateral surveillance for the IMF, designed to foster action-oriented debate and policy actions on a problem of systemic or regional importance. The first multilateral consultation focused on facilitating the resolution of global imbalances while...

Effective Fund surveillance over the members of currency unions entails discussions at the regional level. This requirement derives from the fact that currency union members have devolved responsibility for policy areas that are central to Fund surveillance, notably monetary and exchange rate...