This staff paper on euro area policy 2013 Article IV Consultation discusses economic development and policies. Severe market stresses have subsided, although private borrowing costs have remained too high in the periphery. In these economies, sovereign borrowing costs have declined from...

The creation of EMU raises the question whether the common monetary policy has the same impact in all member countries. We analyse the convergence of interest rates in four major EMU countries from 1999 to 2007. We suggest to test the convergence of the interest rates with the full term...