We extend Dornbusch's (1973) model to determine whether the countercyclical trade balance which is often observed in real business cycle studies can be rationalized and show that the sum of export and import elasticities being less than one is responsible for the complex fluctuation of exchange...

The recent adoption of the Delors Report brings into question the extent of the EC integration and the costs to individual countries of continued integration. In this paper we address this question by comparing EC countries to non-EC countries, specifically comparing the extent to which domestic...

This paper employs worldwide data on output and bilateral trade in order to identify optimum currency areas (OCAs) on a global basis. By retaining only two of the many criteria in the literature on OCAs, computer programming could serve to do the identification. The two chosen criteria relate to...

This paper studies the impact of monetary arrangements on trade integration and business cycle correlation in late 19th century Europe. We estimate a gravity model and show that tighter monetary integration was associated with substantially higher trade, as in recent studies using contemporary...

This paper questions the impact of trade integration on business cycle sychronization in the EMU by distinguishing increase of existing trade flows (the intensive margin) and creation of new trade flows (the extensive margin). Using a DSGE model, we find that synchronization is weakened when new...

This paper analyzes the dynamic impact of discretionary government consumption purchases on private demand. Using a panel of 132 countries from 1960 to 2008, we find that while discretionary changes in government consumption lead to crowding-in effects in the short run, crowding-out effects take...