This research note discusses the Euro crisis in Greece in light of the referendum of July the 5th. It lays out the social and political costs of a GREXIT, but also of a continuing austerity policy. It proposes a reform policy fostering growth in Greece and discusses the role of conditionality....

The influential work of Ramey and Ramey (1995) highlighted an empirical relationship that has now come to be regarded as conventional wisdom that output volatility and growth are negatively correlated. We reexamine this relationship in the context of globalization a term typically used to...

This paper empirically tests the hypothesis that trade can act as an engine of growth using panel data for the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a regional integration agreement (RIA) organization, the central objective of whose formation was the need to accelerate, foster, and...

The influential work of Ramey and Ramey (1995) highlighted an empirical relationship that has now come to be regarded as conventional wisdom – that output volatility and growth are negatively correlated. We reexamine this relationship in the context of globalization – a term typically used...

We focus on the role that the transmission of information between a multilateral (the IMF) and a country has for the optimal design of conditional reforms. Our model predicts that when agency problems are especially severe, and/or IMF information is valuable, a centralized control is indeed...

This paper investigates the East African Community (EAC) partner states' readiness for a common currency. It uses recent data to assess the impact of policy coordination in the region during the last seven years of East African Monetary Union's protocol implementation. Despite some similarities...

In this paper, we investigate how economic, political and institutional factors affect the choice of exchange rate regimes, using data on eight MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries over the 1984-2016 period. Specifically, we run random-effects ordered probit regressions of the...

We focus on the role that the transmission of information between a multilateral (the IMF) and a country has for the optimal design of conditional reforms. Our model predicts that when agency problems are especially severe, and/or IMF information is valuable, a centralized control is indeed...

This paper analyzes the potential advantages and disadvantages of the introduction of the common European currency for the German labor market. First, experiences of the German currency union of 1990 cannot be transferred to the European case. Second, the loss of the instrument of nominal...

According to the traditional 'optimum currency area' approach, not much will be lost from a very hard peg to a currency union if there has been little reason for variations in the exchange rate. This paper takes a different approach and highlights the fact that high exchange rate volatility may...