Optimal adjustment paths in a monetary union

Regional Price Adjustment in a Monetary Union

Using a New-Keynesian framework, we investigate how far the inflationary processes in member states of EMU cause regional price levels to converge. We fail to produce hard evidence of the present existence of such an adjustment mechanism, notwithstanding that inflation in some countries tends to converge towards the euro area level. Overall, inflation persistence has declined significantly over...

Market Deregulation and Optimal Monetary Policy in a Monetary Union

The global crisis that began in 2008 reheated the debate on market deregulation as a tool to improve economic performance. This paper addresses the consequences of increased flexibility in goods and labor markets for the conduct of monetary policy in a monetary union. We model a two-country monetary union with endogenous product creation, labor market frictions, and price and wage rigidities. W...

Monetary Union Its Costs

Implementing Monetary Policy in a Fragmented Monetary Union

This paper shows how interbank market fragmentation disrupts monetary policy implementation. Fragmentation is defined as the situation where some banks are cut from the interbank loan market. The paper introduces fragmentation into an otherwise standard theoretical model of monetary policy implementation, where profit maximizing banks, subject to reserve requirements, borrow and deposit funds a...

Monetary and Fiscal Policy in a Monetary Union

The idea that a common monetary policy in a monetary union imposes costs when compared with independent policies at the country level is largely widespread in the literature. This result leads directly to a greater emphasis on national Þscal policies. We show in this paper that a common monetary policy has more power to asymmetrically affect countries than is usually stated in the literature. A...