The global financial crisis which erupted in the United States instantaneously swept across Europe. Like the United States, the European Monetary Union (EMU) was ripe for a crash. It had its own real estate bubble, specifically in Ireland and Spain, indulged in excessive deficit spending,...

Starting with Friedman and Mundell the academic literature has conducted a high level debate concerning the design of cross-country monetary arrangements. That debate has become very complex and the data requirements necessary for appropriate application of the principles developed are far...

This paper quantifies the welfare differences among a monetary union, flexible exchange rates (economic disintegration) and a monetary plus fiscal transfer union (higher economic integration). The vehicle of analysis is a medium-scale New Keynesian DSGE model consisting of two heterogeneous...

Our study tries to find out whether wage dynamics between Euro member countries became more synchronized through the adoption of the common currency. We calculate bivarate correlation coefficients of wage and wage cost dynamics and run a model of endogenously induced changes of coefficients,...

This paper examines whether macroeconomic convergence is an automatic outcome of forming a currency union by combining an analysis of real interest parity (RIP) in the EU with the argument for the endogeneity of the Optimum Currency Area (OCA) criteria. Using the DF-GLS and the CIPS* panel unit...

Our study tries to find out whether wage dynamics between Euro member countries became more synchronized through the adoption of the common currency. We calculate bivarate correlation coefficients of wage and wage cost dynamics and run a model of endogenously induced changes of coefficients,...

This paper examines whether macroeconomic convergence is an automatic outcome of forming a currency union by combining an analysis of real interest parity (RIP) in the EU with the argument for the endogeneity of the Optimum Currency Area (OCA) criteria. Using the DF-GLS and the CIPS* panel unit...