Much attention has been paid to the sharp fall in world trade associated with the economic crisis during the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. Alarming forecasts have been published for the whole year of 2009 and several explanations have been offered. In particular, beyond the...

We study the impact of rotating votes in the ECB Governing Council after EMU enlargement, based on national and euro-wide Taylor rules and on a convergence assumption. We find that the rotation system yields monetary policy decisions that are close both to full centralization and to a voting...

Based on a panel of bilateral FDI flows among 11 OECD countries over 1984-2000, we show that, although agglomeration-related factors are strong determinants of FDI, tax differentials also play a significant role in understanding foreign location decisions. We further investigate non-linearities...

Based on simulations of an original DGE model of the US, Chinese and Euro area economies with financial frictions and various monetary regimes, the paper shows that the contribution of China in global rebalancing should primarily rely on structural policies aiming at reducing aggregate savings...

We examine the economic rationale for monetary union(s) in Sub-Saharan Africa through the use of cluster analysis on a sample of 17 countries. The variables used stem from the theory of optimum currency areas and from the fear-of-floating literature. It is found that the existing CFA franc zone...

The creation of the euro will be a major change to the International Monetary System, for at least three reasons. First, the euro will be the currency of a large economic zone and will acquire some of the fundamental attributes which characterise an international currency. Secondly, the monetary...