Although the Scottish electorate voted down independence in 2014, Brexit has led to renewed calls from Scottish political leaders for a second referendum. Scottish independence would likely lead to joining the European Union, and this would obligate Scotland to eventually join the euro common...

A number of papers over the last decade have posited that Optimal Currency Areas are endogenous with respect to business cycle synchronization. The claim is that a common currency will greatly increase trade, and then trade will increase output synchronization. Countries that thus seem...

Although the Scottish electorate voted down independence in 2014, Brexit has led to renewed calls from Scottish political leaders for a second referendum. Scottish independence would likely lead to joining the European Union, and this would obligate Scotland to eventually join the euro common...

If there is a high level of synchronization among euro zone country housing markets, the European Central Bank can incorporate the housing sector into its monetary policy decisions. If such co-movement is low, however, the ECB would have a harder time setting policy. Given the importance of...

For the European Central Bank to incorporate euro-wide housing into its policy decisions, it is helpful if home values across the currency union are convergent in the long run. We apply a probabilistic pair-wise approach to the question of whether home values converge across eight euro-zone...

Convergence in per-capita income across member countries is a stated goal of the European Union. This goal applies, of course, to all euro zone nations. The impact of a common currency on income convergence is both theoretically and empirically ambiguous, however. Previous studies on European...

A lack of co-movement among the national housing markets in the euro monetary union makes the job of the ECB difficult. If markets are depressed in some countries, while booming in others, the ECB would be unable to create simultaneous loose and tight monetary conditions tailored to each...