This paper empirically addresses the question of the prospects of integration among African states in light of Mundell’s theory of optimum currency areas. The symmetry and asymmetry of shocks affecting African countries is measured by a structural vector autoregression decomposition method...

We use an extensive sample of 763 bonds issued by financial institutions of three countries of the “European South”, in 1997, one year before the selection of the “first-wave” EMU participants, and in 1999, EMU’ s starting year, to investigate the extent to which the aforementioned...

The eurozone is the crown jewel in the process of European integration. This monetary zone includes the most advanced integration grouping of countries in the European Union. The eurozone has been expanding the number of its participants, a sign of success in any economic or political union....

Similar to Chile in the 1990s, Slovenia has introduced an unremunerated reserve requirement (URR) on financial credits in 1995. We find that the URR has not been effective in reducing overall inflows of foreign capital. Hence, the gain in monetary autonomy has been limited. While the overall...

This paper revisits the debate on the financial stability implications of the liberalization process dynamics. We hold that the financial liberalization effect on exchange pressures changes beyond some threshold degrees. Therefore, we assess the ability of the threshold models to gauge financial...

Since the end of the Second World War, economic integration has been regarded as being one of the most important global economic policies. Its relevance has not diminished and most countries, especially those that are developing, consider it to be a long-term strategy. Integration is present in...

This paper aims to assess whether the EU is an optimum currency area (OCA)by examining synchronization of business cycles and long-run outþut linkages in the EU countries. We argue that a necessary condition for the desirability of EMU membership for national economies is that the degree of...

Accompanying the wave of liberalization in motion since the mid 1980s, trade complementarity and its underlying structure of comparative advantage have started to dictate the directions of international trade flows. The vibrant FDIexport- led Asian growth has revealed the role of FDI as a...

This paper examines whether or not the Northeast Asian economies, namely, China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, can form a currency union, where a single currency and a uniform monetary policy are adopted, or an exchange rate union where all the currencies are pegged to an internal or external...

This paper considers the effects of formation or new accession to a monetary union (MU) on itself (“ins”) and the outsiders (“outs”) as well. Since a MU inherently means a “large” entity, we construct a large country model to examine those effects in the context of economic growth....