There are 13 countries in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) with floating exchange rate regimes, de jure. This paper uses the framework pioneered by Frankel and Wei (1994) and extended in Frankel and Wei (2008) to show that most of them have been tracking either the euro or the US...

The governance structure in global bodies like the IMF continues to be disproportionally dominated by advanced economies. Sustained rapid growth in emerging and developing economies (EDEs) in the past 2-3 decades has led to their growing relative weight in the global economy, but with little...

What do climate change, global financial crises, pandemics, and fragility and conflict have in common? They are all examples of global risks that can cross geographical and generational boundaries and whose mismanagement can reverse gains in development and jeopardize the well-being of...

This paper evaluates the role of trade and financial linkages in the decision to enter a monetary union. We estimate a two-country DSGE model for the U.K. economy and the euro area, and use the model to compute the welfare trade-offs from joining the euro. We evaluate two alternative scenarios....

This paper proposes a quantitative assessment of the welfare effects arising from the Common Monetary Area (CMA) and an array of broader grouping among Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. Model simulations suggest that (i) participating in the CMA benefits all members; (ii)...

Sovereign risk premia in several euro area countries have risen markedly since 2008, driving up credit spreads in the private sector as well. We propose a New Keynesian model of a two-region monetary union that accounts for this “sovereign risk channel.” The model is calibrated to the euro...

The CFA franc zone has had one of the longest experiences with a fixed exchange rate for a convertible currency and regional integration of any group of developing countries. France, the anchor country, provides aid to support the zone. This paper asks whether the arrangements are more than just...

We apply the fundamentals equilibrium exchange rate (FEER) approach and the Johansen cointegration methodology to investigate the behavior of the real effective exchange rates of the two monetary unions of the CFA franc zone (CEMAC and WAEMU) vis-agrave;-vis their long-run equilibrium paths. For...

Once upon a time, in the 1990s, it was widely agreed that neither Europe nor the United States was an optimum currency area, although moderating this concern was the finding that it was possible to distinguish a regional core and periphery (Bayoumi and Eichengreen, 1993). Revisiting these...