European Monetary System (european + monetary_system)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting


Selected Abstracts


The international monetary system in the last and next 20 years

ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 47 2006
Barry Eichengreen
SUMMARY The evolution of exchange rate regimes The last two decades have seen far-reaching changes in the structure of the international monetary system. Europe moved from the European Monetary System to the euro. China adopted a dollar peg and then moved to a basket, band and crawl in 2005. Emerging markets passed through a series of crises, leading some to adopt regimes of greater exchange rate flexibility and others to rethink the pace of capital account liberalization. Interpreting these developments is no easy task: some observers conclude that recent trends are confirmation of the ,bipolar view' that intermediate exchange rate arrangements are disappearing, while members of the ,fear of floating school' conclude precisely the opposite. We show that the two views can be reconciled if one distinguishes countries by their stage of economic and financial development. Among the advanced countries, intermediate regimes have essentially disappeared; this supports the bipolar view for the group of countries for which it was first developed. Within this subgroup, the dominant movement has been toward hard pegs, reflecting monetary unification in Europe. While emerging markets have also seen a decline in the prevalence of intermediate arrangements, these regimes still account for more than a third of the relevant subsample. Here the majority of the evacuees have moved to floats rather than fixes, reflecting the absence of EMU-like arrangements in other parts of the world. Among developing countries, the prevalence of intermediate regimes has again declined, but less dramatically. Where these regimes accounted for two-thirds of the developing country subsample in 1990, they account for a bit more than half of that subsample today. As with emerging markets, the majority of those abandoning the middle have moved to floats rather than hard pegs. The gradual nature of these trends does not suggest that intermediate regimes will disappear outside the advanced countries anytime soon. , Barry Eichengreen and Raul Razo-Garcia [source]


Multivariate GARCH Modeling of Exchange Rate Volatility Transmission in the European Monetary System

FINANCIAL REVIEW, Issue 1 2000
Colm Kearney
C32/F31/G15 Abstract We construct a series of 3-, 4- and 5-variable multivariate GARCH models of exchange rate volatility transmission across the important European Monetary System (EMS) currencies including the French franc, the German mark, the Italian lira, and the European Currency Unit. The models are estimated without imposing the common restriction of constant correlation on both daily and weekly data from April 1979,March 1997. Our results indicate the importance of checking for specification robustness in multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heleroskedasticity (GARCH) modeling, we find that increased temporal aggregation reduces observed volatility transmission, and that the mark plays a dominant position in terms of volatility transmission. [source]


Towards regional monetary cooperation in East Asia: lessons from other parts of the world

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FINANCE & ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2005
Masahiro Kawai
Abstract This paper discusses regional monetary cooperation for East Asia, by drawing lessons from the European Payments Union, the CFA Franc Zone and the Arab Monetary Fund. Along with the well-known experience of the European Monetary System, these experiences suggest that effective monetary cooperation should include: (1) a surveillance mechanism; (2) a regional financing facility; (3) a common unit of account; and (4) exchange rate coordination. In East Asia, the existing mechanisms of regional surveillance must be strengthened, and the liquidity support mechanism under the Chiang Mai Initiative must evolve into a common pool of foreign exchange reserves. Over the longer term, the region may need to create its own common unit of account and to develop a framework for exchange rate coordination. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Cointegration, Efficiency and Forecasting in the Currency Market

JOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 1-2 2001
Wilson H. S. Tong
Existing literature on using the cointegration approach to examine the efficiency of the foreign exchange market gives mixed results. Arguments typically focus on econometric testing techniques, with fractional cointegration being the most current one. This paper tries to look at the issue from an economic perspective. It shows that the cointegrating relationship, whether cointegrated or fractionally cointegrated, is found mainly among the currencies of the European Monetary System which are set to fluctuate within a given range. Hence, there is no inconsistency with the notion of market efficiency. Yet, exploiting such a cointegrating relationship is helpful in currency forecasting. There is some evidence that restricting the forecasting model to consist of only cointegrated currencies improves forecasting efficiency. [source]


Further Evidence on PPP Adjustment Speeds: the Case of Effective Real Exchange Rates and the EMS,

OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICS & STATISTICS, Issue 4 2003
Ivan Paya
Abstract Two different approaches intend to resolve the ,puzzling' slow convergence to purchasing power parity (PPP) reported in the literature [see Rogoff (1996), Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 34.] On the one hand, there are models that consider a non-linear adjustment of real exchange rate to PPP induced by transaction costs. Such costs imply the presence of a certain transaction band where adjustment is too costly to be undertaken. On the other hand, there are models that relax the ,classical' PPP assumption of constant equilibrium real exchange rates. A prominent theory put together by Balassa (1964, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 72) and Samuelson (1964 Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 46), the BS effect, suggests that a non-constant real exchange rate equilibrium is induced by different productivity growth rates between countries. This paper reconciles those two approaches by considering an exponential smooth transition-in-deviation non-linear adjustment mechanism towards non-constant equilibrium real exchange rates within the EMS (European Monetary System) and effective rates. The equilibrium is proxied, in a theoretically appealing manner, using deterministic trends and the relative price of non-tradables to proxy for BS effects. The empirical results provide further support for the hypothesis that real exchange rates are well described by symmetric, nonlinear processes. Furthermore, the half-life of shocks in such models is found to be dramatically shorter than that obtained in linear models. [source]