This paper investigates the rationality of proceeding with a common currency in West Africa by testing for symmetry and speed of adjustment to four underlying structural shocks among a pair of 66 ECOWAS economies. The findings reveal that there is relatively high degree of symmetry in the...

The failure of key EU Member States to respect the provisions of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) a few years after its inception triggered a heated debate on how to reform the framework of fiscal policy coordination in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This paper analyzes 101 reform...

This paper investigates the implications of alternative scale variables of money demand for the comparison of a flexible exchange rate regime with a monetary union in a New Open Economy Macroeconomics setup. The welfare evaluation of exchange rate regimes esstentially depends on the exchange...

The aim of this paper is to point out the shortcomings of propositions that deny economic policy any active role and propose a simple model by which public expenditure is still recognised as performing an active and positive function. The core of our thesis is that public deficit, because it...

In contrast to Robert Mundell‘s Optimum Currency Area theory and his recommendation of forming a monetary union, the economic fundamentals of Euro area member countries have not harmonized. The opposite holds: the Euro core countries - most of all Germany, but also the Netherlands and Finland...

Public financial management by the government is very important in view of the level of welfare in Indonesia is still low, as there are still much poverty with the level of fulfillment of the needs of low, corruption that occurs in every area of government, income distribution is uneven, low...

One of the outstanding aims of most liberation movements has been to increase the economic well-being of their people, Guinea-Bissau being no exception in this respect. How far has the new Nation State succeeded in fulfilling this aim? A comparative analysis of the implementation of land...

This paper serves as a brief introduction and overview for a volume that provides a set of six case studies from West Africa in order to contribute to an assessment of the benefits of growth (or the cost of a lack of growth) for poverty reduction in those countries. The first part of the volume...

Tourism and related recreation activities play a significant role in the generation of income / foreign exchange and provision of employment opportunities. Against this backdrop, this paper aims at ascertaining empirically the impact of tourism on the West African economy from 2000 – 2004. The...