Design failures in the Eurozone: can they be fixed?

I analyse the nature of the design failures of the Eurozone. I argue first that the endogenous dynamics of booms and busts that are endemic in capitalism continued to work at the national level in the Eurozone and that the monetary union in no way disciplined these into a union-wide dynamics. On the contrary the monetary union probably exacerbated these national booms and busts. Second, the existing stabilizers that existed at the national level prior to the start of the union were stripped away from the member-states without being transposed at the monetary union level. This left the member states “naked” and fragile, unable to deal with the coming national disturbances. I study the way these failures can be overcome. This leads me to stress the role of the ECB as a lender of last resort and the need to make macroeconomic policies more symmetric so as to avoid a deflationary bias in the Eurozone. I conclude with some thoughts on political unification

Current Account Imbalances and Structural Adjustment in the Euro Area: How to Rebalance Competitiveness

Low international competitiveness of a set of euro area countries, which have become evident by large current account deficits and rising risk premiums on government bonds, is one of the most challenging economic policy issues for Europe. We analyse the role of private restructuring and public structural reforms for the urgently needed readjustment of intra-euro area imbalances. A panel regression reveals a significant impact of private restructuring and public structural reforms on intra-euro area competitiveness. This implies that private restructuring and public reforms are rather than public transfers the best way to preserve long-term economic stability in Europe.Structural reforms, competitiveness, current account imbalances, euro area, European Monetary Union, dynamic panel estimation, interaction term

The Regime-Dependent Determination of Credibility: A New Look at European Interest Rate Differentials

Once you allow for persistence in macroeconomic variables, two aspects of exchange rate credibility emerge whose relative importance can vary over time. Hence, the effect of policy measures on interest rate differentials becomes ambiguous. In this paper, a Markov-switching VAR that allows for parameter shifts across regimes is employed to test the hypothesis of regime-dependent determination of credibility for major EMS countries. The model separates two regimes that are distinct with respect to the time series properties of the interest rate spread. Regime-dependent impulse response functions reveal substantial differences in the response of spreads to macroeconomic shocks across regimes.Regime-switching; VAR; interest rate differentials; regime-dependent impulse response functions; credibility

Nominal versus Real Convergence with Respect to EMU Accession.How to Cope with the Balassa-Samuelson Dilemma

This paper explores the conflict of real and monetary convergence during the EMU run-up of the future Central and Eastern European (CEE) EU member states. Based on a Balassa-Samuelson model of productivity driven inflation, it compares the policy options which might make the compliance possible, i.e., fiscal tightening and nominal appreciation within the ERM2 band. Nominal appreciation within ERM2 seems the better option to achieve the compliance with the Maastricht criteria as no discretionary government intervention is necessary and losses in terms of real growth are less. Having once opted for nominal appreciation within ERM2 by fixing the ERM2 entry rate as the ERM2 central rate (Irish model), a high degree of flexibility is provided in coping with erratic short-term capital inflows. Setting the ERM2 entry rate below or above the ERM2 central rate (Greek model) implies a clear exchange rate path within ERM2 and thereby less exchange rate volatility. But the Greek model also requires accurate information about the future exchange rate path and strict fulfilment of the Maastricht criteria within the projected time frame. Despite the merits of nominal appreciation, countries committed to hard euro pegs might choose fiscal contraction as the second best solution.Euro; EMU; EU-East-Central Europe; enlargement

Macroeconomic modeling when agents are imperfectly informed

DSGE-models have become important tools of analysis not only in academia but increasingly in the board rooms of central banks. The success of these models has much to do with the coherence of the intellectual framework it provides. The limitations of these models come from the fact that they make very strong assumptions about the cognitive abilities of agents in understanding the underlying model. In this paper we relax this strong assumption. We develop a stylized DSGEmodel in which individuals use simple rules of thumb (heuristics) to forecast the future inflation and output gap. We compare this model with the rational expectations version of the same underlying model. We find that the dynamics predicted by the heuristic model differs from the rational expectations version in some important respects, in particular in their capacity to produce endogenous economic cycles.DSGE-model, imperfect information, heuristics, animal spirits

Financial deregulation in developing countries.

Country; Developing countries;

The role of cognitive limitations and heterogeneous expectations for aggregate production and credit cycle

The behavioural model of De Grauwe and Macchiarelli (2015) is extended to include financial frictions on the (aggregate) supply side. The result is a tight and sustained feedback loop between animal spirits on one hand, and supply of credit, capital purchase and production on the other. During phases of optimism, credit is abundant, access to production capital is easy, the cash-in-advance constraint is lax, risks are undervalued, and production is booming. Upon reversal in market sentiment, the contraction is quick and deep. Moreover, the model is capable of replicating the stylized fact of a long and sustained simultaneous growth in credit, production and asset prices observed in the US since mid1990’s. Lastly, the behavioural model does a decent job in matching US data including multiple supply-side relations including capital-firm credit and inflation-interest rate

Animal spirits and credit cycles

In this paper we extend the behavioral macroeconomic model as proposed by De Grauwe (2012) to include a banking sector. The behavioral model takes the view that agents have limited cognitive abilities. As a result, it is “rational” to use simple forecasting rules and to subject the use of these rules to a fitness test. Agents are then driven to select the rule that performs best. The behavioral model produces endogenous and self-fulfilling movements of optimism and pessimism (animal spirits). Our main result is that the existence of banks intensifies these movements, creating a greater scope for booms and busts. Thus, banks do not create but amplify animal spirits. We find that increases in the equity ratios of banks tend to reduce the importance of animal spirits over the business cycle. The other policy conclusion we derive from our results is that the central bank has an important responsibility for stabilising output: output stabilization is an instrument to “tame the animal spirits”. This has the effect of improving the trade-off between inflation and output volatility