The political economy under monetary union - has the euro made a difference?
Abstract
Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has transformed Europe and has created an integrated pan-European economy. Much research has focused on understanding this integration process and what benefits and costs it entails. This paper identifies a political economy channel of EMU as the monetary union implies that member states had to transfer or at least curtail their policy autonomy in several areas, such as monetary policy and fiscal policy. The paper shows that EMU has helped reduce the impact of political shocks on the domestic economy of member states but magnified the transmission of political shocks within the euro area. Equally importantly, economies with a weaker track record in terms of economic and institutional quality exhibited a significantly higher sensitivity to domestic political shocks before EMU, but not thereafter. While this may entail that EMU has brought benefits to countries with a weaker economic and institutional stability by insulating them from adverse political developments at home, a potential drawback is that it may provide weaker market discipline for domestic political stability. JEL Classification: F31; F33; G14.Download Info
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Paper provided by European Central Bank in its series Working Paper Series with number 956.Length: 48 pages
Date of creation: Nov 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20080956
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Related research
Keywords: EMU; political economy; political news; monetary policy; fiscal policy; stock markets; transmission.;Other versions of this item:
- Marcel Fratzscher & Livio Stracca, 2009. "The political economy under monetary union: has the euro made a difference?," Economic Policy, CEPR & CES & MSH, vol. 24, pages 307-348, 04.
- F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
- F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions
- G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2008-12-01 (All new papers)
- NEP-CBA-2008-12-01 (Central Banking)
- NEP-EEC-2008-12-01 (European Economics)
- NEP-MAC-2008-12-01 (Macroeconomics)
- NEP-MON-2008-12-01 (Monetary Economics)
- NEP-POL-2008-12-01 (Positive Political Economics)
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Constantinos Alexiou & Joseph Nellis, 2012. "Is the ‘EURO’ a Defunct Currency?," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 2(3), pages 296-303.
- Marcel Fratzscher & Livio Stracca, 2009. "Does it pay to have the euro? Italy’s politics and financial markets under the lira and the euro," Working Paper Series 1064, European Central Bank.
- Jürgen Jerger & Oke Röhe, 2012. "Testing for Parameter Stability in DSGE Models. The Cases of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain," Working Papers 118, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).
- Jerger, Jürgen & Röhe, Oke, 2009.
"Testing for Parameter Stability in DSGE Models. The Cases of France, Germany and Spain,"
University of Regensburg Working Papers in Business, Economics and Management Information Systems
453, University of Regensburg, Department of Economics.
- Jürgen Jerger & Oke Röhe, 2009. "Testing for Parameter Stability in DSGE Models. The Cases of France, Germany and Spain," Working Papers 276, Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung (Institute for East and South-East European Studies), revised Mar 2011.
- Jerger, Jürgen & Röhe, Oke, 2011. "Testing for Parameter Stability in DSGE Models. The Cases of France, Germany and Spain," University of Regensburg Working Papers in Business, Economics and Management Information Systems 453, University of Regensburg, Department of Economics.
- João Rebelo Barbosa & Rui Henrique Alves, 2011. "The Euro Area Ten Years after Its Creation: (Divergent) Competitiveness and the Optimum Currency Area Theory," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 58(5), pages 605-629, December.
- João Rebelo Barbosa & Rui Henrique Alves, 2011. "Divergent competitiveness in the eurozone and the optimum currency area theory," FEP Working Papers 436, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
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