Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Theoretical Issues Pertaining to Monetary Unions

Contents:

Author Info

  • Bennett T. McCallum

Abstract

The optimal currency area (OCA) concept is central to the economic analysis of monetary unions, as it clearly identifies the relevant optimizing tradeoff: extension of the area over which a single currency is used enhances allocative efficiency but reduces the possibility of tailoring monetary policy to the needs of different areas. Empirical work has verified the importance of various features of economies that make them strong or weak candidates for a common currency arrangement, but existing studies do not permit actual quantification of costs and benefits. Thus the OCA concept remains less than fully operational. A second relevant body of theory is that pertaining to currency crises. Formal models clarify various points concerning speculative attacks on fixed exchange rates, and show how abrupt reserve losses and depreciations can occur rationally at times when no major shocks are hitting the system. These models support the notion that a fixed (but adjustable) exchange- rate regime is not a viable option for most nations, given high mobility of financial capital. Also discussed is the recently- developed fiscal theory of price level determination, which if valid would have major implications for monetary-fiscal arrangements in currency unions. This theory does not contend that fiscal behavior drives an accommodative monetary authority, but rather that the price level roughly mimics the pattern of the government bond stock rather than base money when their paths differ drastically. An example is exposited in which there are two rational expectations solutions for an economy with a constant money supply: a traditional solution in which the price level is also constant and a fiscalist solution in which the price level and bond stock both explode as time passes. These solutions represent competing hypotheses about the behavior of actual economies; the paper suggests that the former is more likely to prevail in actuality.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w7393.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 7393.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: Oct 1999
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7393

Note: EFG IFM ME
Contact details of provider:
Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Phone: 617-868-3900
Email:
Web page: http://www.nber.org
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. John H. Cochrane, 1998. "A Frictionless View of U.S. Inflation," CRSP working papers 479, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
  2. Buiter, Willem H, 1998. "The Young Person's Guide to Neutrality, Price Level Indeterminacy, Interest Rate Pegs and Fiscal Theories of the Price Level," CEPR Discussion Papers 1799, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  3. Isard,Peter, 1995. "Exchange Rate Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521466004.
  4. McCallum, Bennett T., 2001. "Indeterminacy, bubbles, and the fiscal theory of price level determination," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 19-30, February.
  5. Obstfeld, Maurice, 1996. "Models of currency crises with self-fulfilling features," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 1037-1047, April.
  6. Canzoneri, Matthew B & Cumby, Robert & Diba, Behzad, 1998. "Is the Price Level Determined by the Needs of Fiscal Solvency?," CEPR Discussion Papers 1772, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  7. Obstfeld, Maurice, 1986. "Rational and Self-fulfilling Balance-of-Payments Crises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 72-81, March.
  8. Garber, P.M. & Svensson, L.E.O., 1994. "The Operation and Collapse of Fixed Exchange Rate Regimes," Papers 588, Stockholm - International Economic Studies.
  9. Stephen W. Salant & Dale W. Henderson, 1976. "Market anticipations, government policy, and the price of gold," International Finance Discussion Papers 81, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  10. Maurice Obstfeld & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 1996. "Foundations of International Macroeconomics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262150476.
  11. Robert Flood & Nancy Marion, 1998. "Perspectives on the Recent Currency Crisis Literature," NBER Working Papers 6380, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  12. Tamim Bayoumi and Barry Eichengreen., 1996. "Ever Closer to Heaven? An Optimum-Currency-Area Index for European Countries," Center for International and Development Economics Research (CIDER) Working Papers C96-078, University of California at Berkeley.
  13. Leeper, Eric M., 1991. "Equilibria under 'active' and 'passive' monetary and fiscal policies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 129-147, February.
  14. Thomas Willett & Edward Tower, 1970. "Currency areas and exchange-rate flexibility," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer, vol. 105(1), pages 48-65, September.
  15. Thomas J. Sargent & Neil Wallace, 1981. "Some unpleasant monetarist arithmetic," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Fall.
  16. Woodford, Michael, 1994. "Monetary Policy and Price Level Determinacy in a Cash-in-Advance Economy," Economic Theory, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 345-80.
  17. Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe & Martin Uribe, 1997. "Price level determinacy and monetary policy under a balanced-budget requirement," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1997-17, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  18. Sims, Christopher A, 1994. "A Simple Model for Study of the Determination of the Price Level and the Interaction of Monetary and Fiscal Policy," Economic Theory, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 381-99.
  19. Flood, Robert P. & Garber, Peter M., 1984. "Collapsing exchange-rate regimes : Some linear examples," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1-2), pages 1-13, August.
  20. Bergin, Paul R., 2000. "Fiscal solvency and price level determination in a monetary union," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 37-53, February.
  21. Bennett T. McCallum & Edward Nelson, . "An Optimizing IS-LM Specification for Monetary Policy and Business Cycle Analysis," GSIA Working Papers 1997-71, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
  22. Isard,Peter, 1995. "Exchange Rate Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521460477.
  23. Bennett T. McCallum, 1984. "Are Bond-Financed Deficits Inflationary? A Ricardian Analysis," NBER Working Papers 0905, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  24. Salant, Stephen W & Henderson, Dale W, 1978. "Market Anticipations of Government Policies and the Price of Gold," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(4), pages 627-48, August.
  25. Nancy Marion, 1999. "Some Parallels Between Currency and Banking Crises," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 473-490, November.
  26. Egon Sohmen, 1957. "Demand Elasticities and the Foreign-Exchange Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65, pages 431.
  27. Dupor, Bill, 2000. "Exchange rates and the fiscal theory of the price level," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 613-630, June.
  28. Fukuda, Shin-ichi & Hoshi, Takeo & Ito, Takatoshi & Rose, Andrew, 2006. "International Finance," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 455-458, December.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Bennett T. McCallum, 2003. "Monetary Policy in Economies with Little or No Money," NBER Working Papers 9838, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Felipe Morandé & Matías Tapia, 2002. "Exchange Rate Policy in Chile: From the Band to Floating and Beyond," Working Papers wp192, University of Chile, Department of Economics.
  3. Marek Dabrowski & Artur Radziwill, 2007. "Regional vs. Global Public Goods: The Case of Post-Communist Transition," CASE Network Studies and Analyses 0336, CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research.
  4. Obinyeluaku, Moses & Viegi, Nicola, 2009. "How does fiscal policy affect monetary policy in the Southern African Community (SADC)?," MPRA Paper 15372, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  5. António Afonso, 2002. "Disturbing the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level: Can it Fit the EU-15," Working Papers 2002/01, Department of Economics at the School of Economics and Management (ISEG), Technical University of Lisbon..
  6. S G Hall & B Yhap, 2003. "Measuring the Correlation of Shocks between the UK and the Core of Europe," NIESR Discussion Papers 213, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
  7. Thomas Plümper & Vera E. Troeger, 2004. "External Effects of Currency Unions," CIG Working Papers SP II 2004-06, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG).
  8. Felipe Morandé & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, 2000. "Chile's Peso: Better Than (Just) Living with the Dollar?," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 68, Central Bank of Chile.
  9. Leith, Campbell & Warren, Paul & Wren-Lewis, Simon, 2003. "Fiscal policy, interest rate shocks and prices," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 361-382, March.
  10. Jérôme Trotignon, 2003. "EMU enlargement towards CEEC’s : risks of sector-based and geographic asymmetric shocks," Working Papers 0309, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique (GATE), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Université Lyon 2, Ecole Normale Supérieure.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7393

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.