Economic Convergence in the Euro Area: Coming Together or Drifting Apart?

Economic Convergence in the Euro Area: Coming Together or Drifting Apart? PDF Author: Mr.Jeffrey R. Franks
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1484338499
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 47

Get Book Here

Book Description
We examine economic convergence among euro area countries on multiple dimensions. While there was nominal convergence of inflation and interest rates, real convergence of per capita income levels has not occurred among the original euro area members since the advent of the common currency. Income convergence stagnated in the early years of the common currency and has reversed in the wake of the global economic crisis. New euro area members, in contrast, have seen real income convergence. Business cycles became more synchronized, but the amplitude of those cycles diverged. Financial cycles showed a similar pattern: sychronizing more over time, but with divergent amplitudes. Income convergence requires reforms boosting productivity growth in lagging countries, while cyclical and financial convergence can be enhanced by measures to improve national and euro area fiscal policies, together with steps to deepen the single market.

Economic Convergence in the Euro Area: Coming Together or Drifting Apart?

Economic Convergence in the Euro Area: Coming Together or Drifting Apart? PDF Author: Mr.Jeffrey R. Franks
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1484338499
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 47

Get Book Here

Book Description
We examine economic convergence among euro area countries on multiple dimensions. While there was nominal convergence of inflation and interest rates, real convergence of per capita income levels has not occurred among the original euro area members since the advent of the common currency. Income convergence stagnated in the early years of the common currency and has reversed in the wake of the global economic crisis. New euro area members, in contrast, have seen real income convergence. Business cycles became more synchronized, but the amplitude of those cycles diverged. Financial cycles showed a similar pattern: sychronizing more over time, but with divergent amplitudes. Income convergence requires reforms boosting productivity growth in lagging countries, while cyclical and financial convergence can be enhanced by measures to improve national and euro area fiscal policies, together with steps to deepen the single market.

Economic Policy and the Great Stagflation

Economic Policy and the Great Stagflation PDF Author: Alan S. Blinder
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 1483264564
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
Economic Policy and the Great Stagflation discusses the national economic policy and economics as a policy-oriented science. This book summarizes what economists do and do not know about the inflation and recession that affected the U.S. economy during the years of the Great Stagflation in the mid-1970s. The topics discussed include the basic concepts of stagflation, turbulent economic history of 1971-1976, anatomy of the great recession and inflation, and legacy of the Great Stagflation. The relation of wage-price controls, fiscal policy, and monetary policy to the Great Stagflation is also elaborated. This publication is beneficial to economists and students researching on the history of the Great Stagflation and policy errors of the 1970s.

Unit Roots, Cointegration, and Structural Change

Unit Roots, Cointegration, and Structural Change PDF Author: G. S. Maddala
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521587822
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 528

Get Book Here

Book Description
A comprehensive review of unit roots, cointegration and structural change from a best-selling author.

From Convergence to Crisis

From Convergence to Crisis PDF Author: Alison Johnston
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501703773
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
What explains Eurozone member-states' divergent exposure to Europe’s sovereign debt crisis? Deviating from current fiscal and financial views, From Convergence to Crisis focuses on labor markets in a narrative that distinguishes the winners from the losers in the euro crisis. Alison Johnston argues that Europe’s monetary union was structured in a way that advantaged the corporatist labor markets of its northern economies in external trade and financial lending. Northern Europe’s distinct economic advantage lay not with its fiscal capabilities, which were not that different from those of southern Eurozone countries, but with its wage-setting institutions. Through highly coordinated collective bargaining, the euro North persistently undercut the inflation performance of southern trading partners, destining them to a perpetual cycle of competitive decline and external borrowing. While northern Europe’s corporatist labor markets were always low inflation performers, monetary union ultimately made their wage-setting institutions toxic for the South. The euro’s institutional predecessor, the European Monetary System, included economic and institutional mechanisms that facilitated macroeconomic adjustment and convergence between the common currency’s corporatist and noncorporatist economies. Combining cross-national statistical analysis with detailed qualitative case studies of Denmark, Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Spain, Johnston reveals that monetary union’s removal of these mechanisms allowed external imbalances between these two blocs to grow unchecked, underpinning the crisis in which Europe currently finds itself. Rather than achieving the EU’s goal of an ever-closer union, the common currency produced a monetary environment that destabilized the economic integration of its diverse labor markets.

The Conquest of American Inflation

The Conquest of American Inflation PDF Author: Thomas J. Sargent
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691090122
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book Here

Book Description
In The Conquest of American Inflation, Thomas J. Sargent presents an analysis of the rise and fall of U.S. inflation after 1960. He examines two broad explanations for the behavior of inflation and unemployment in this period: the natural rate hypothesis joined to the Lucas critique and a more traditional econometric policy evaluation modified to include adaptive expectations and learning. His purpose is not only to determine which is the better account, but also to codify for the benefit of the next generation the economic forces that cause inflation. Providing an original methodological link between theoretical and policy economics, this book will engender much debate and become an indispensable text for academics, graduate students, and professional economists.

On the Drivers of Inflation in Sub-Saharan Africa

On the Drivers of Inflation in Sub-Saharan Africa PDF Author: Anh D. M. Nguyen
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513524801
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 28

Get Book Here

Book Description
The perception that inflation dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are driven by supply shocks implies a limited role for monetary policy in influencing inflation in the short run. SSA’s rapid growth, its integration with the global economy, changes in the policy frameworks, among others, in the last decade suggest that the drivers of inflation may have changed. We quantitatively analyze inflation dynamics in SSA using a Global VAR model, which incorporates trade and financial linkages among economies, as well as the role of regional and global demand and inflationary spillovers. We find that in the past 25 years, the main drivers of inflation have been domestic supply shocks and shocks to exchange rate and monetary variables; but that, in recent years, the contribution of these shocks to inflation has fallen. Domestic demand pressures as well as global shocks, and particularly shocks to output, however, have played a larger role in driving inflation over the last decade. We also show that country characteristics matter—the extent of oil and food imports, vulnerability to weather shocks, economic importance of agriculture, trade openness and policy regime, among others, help in explaining the role of shocks.

The Inflation-Targeting Debate

The Inflation-Targeting Debate PDF Author: Ben S. Bernanke
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226044734
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 469

Get Book Here

Book Description
Over the past fifteen years, a significant number of industrialized and middle-income countries have adopted inflation targeting as a framework for monetary policymaking. As the name suggests, in such inflation-targeting regimes, the central bank is responsible for achieving a publicly announced target for the inflation rate. While the objective of controlling inflation enjoys wide support among both academic experts and policymakers, and while the countries that have followed this model have generally experienced good macroeconomic outcomes, many important questions about inflation targeting remain. In Inflation Targeting, a distinguished group of contributors explores the many underexamined dimensions of inflation targeting—its potential, its successes, and its limitations—from both a theoretical and an empirical standpoint, and for both developed and emerging economies. The volume opens with a discussion of the optimal formulation of inflation-targeting policy and continues with a debate about the desirability of such a model for the United States. The concluding chapters discuss the special problems of inflation targeting in emerging markets, including the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary.

Interest and Prices

Interest and Prices PDF Author: Michael Woodford
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400830168
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 805

Get Book Here

Book Description
With the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, any pretense of a connection of the world's currencies to any real commodity has been abandoned. Yet since the 1980s, most central banks have abandoned money-growth targets as practical guidelines for monetary policy as well. How then can pure "fiat" currencies be managed so as to create confidence in the stability of national units of account? Interest and Prices seeks to provide theoretical foundations for a rule-based approach to monetary policy suitable for a world of instant communications and ever more efficient financial markets. In such a world, effective monetary policy requires that central banks construct a conscious and articulate account of what they are doing. Michael Woodford reexamines the foundations of monetary economics, and shows how interest-rate policy can be used to achieve an inflation target in the absence of either commodity backing or control of a monetary aggregate. The book further shows how the tools of modern macroeconomic theory can be used to design an optimal inflation-targeting regime--one that balances stabilization goals with the pursuit of price stability in a way that is grounded in an explicit welfare analysis, and that takes account of the "New Classical" critique of traditional policy evaluation exercises. It thus argues that rule-based policymaking need not mean adherence to a rigid framework unrelated to stabilization objectives for the sake of credibility, while at the same time showing the advantages of rule-based over purely discretionary policymaking.

Inflation in Emerging and Developing Economies

Inflation in Emerging and Developing Economies PDF Author: Jongrim Ha
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464813760
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 524

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first comprehensive study in the context of EMDEs that covers, in one consistent framework, the evolution and global and domestic drivers of inflation, the role of expectations, exchange rate pass-through and policy implications. In addition, the report analyzes inflation and monetary policy related challenges in LICs. The report documents three major findings: In First, EMDE disinflation over the past four decades was to a significant degree a result of favorable external developments, pointing to the risk of rising EMDE inflation if global inflation were to increase. In particular, the decline in EMDE inflation has been supported by broad-based global disinflation amid rapid international trade and financial integration and the disruption caused by the global financial crisis. While domestic factors continue to be the main drivers of short-term movements in EMDE inflation, the role of global factors has risen by one-half between the 1970s and the 2000s. On average, global shocks, especially oil price swings and global demand shocks have accounted for more than one-quarter of domestic inflation variatio--and more in countries with stronger global linkages and greater reliance on commodity imports. In LICs, global food and energy price shocks accounted for another 12 percent of core inflation variatio--half more than in advanced economies and one-fifth more than in non-LIC EMDEs. Second, inflation expectations continue to be less well-anchored in EMDEs than in advanced economies, although a move to inflation targeting and better fiscal frameworks has helped strengthen monetary policy credibility. Lower monetary policy credibility and exchange rate flexibility have also been associated with higher pass-through of exchange rate shocks into domestic inflation in the event of global shocks, which have accounted for half of EMDE exchange rate variation. Third, in part because of poorly anchored inflation expectations, the transmission of global commodity price shocks to domestic LIC inflation (combined with unintended consequences of other government policies) can have material implications for poverty: the global food price spikes in 2010-11 tipped roughly 8 million people into poverty.

Real Convergence in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe

Real Convergence in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe PDF Author: R. Martin
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230235433
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book brings together policymakers, high-level practitioners, academics, and experts from central banks and international institutions in order to review key policy challenges for convergence in the region of central, eastern and south-eastern Europe. Contributions focus especially on inflation, growth, migration and the balance of payments.