What if the euro had never been launched? A counterfactual analysis of the macroeconomic impact of euro membership

The aim of this paper is to gauge quantitatively the macroeconomic impact of EMU membership. Building on the Global VAR framework designed by Pesaran et al. (2004), we want to shed light on the following important questions: What if the euro had never been launched? How would national outputs and inflation rates have evolved? We show that monetary unification promoted lower interest rates and higher output in most euro area (EA) countries, relatively to a situation where national monetary policies would have followed a German-type one. If national monetary policies had adopted British monetary preferences after September 1992 however, this would have led to higher interest rates, depreciations of national exchange rates and higher output in most EA countries, especially over the 1992-1998 period. This is particularly true for the three biggest countries of the EA (France, Germany and Italy). Besides, the single currency regime probably did not have a massive impact on price developments.Euro, counterfactual analysis, global VAR.

Debt denomination, exchange-rate variations and the margins of trade

Using firm-level data, we find that a currency depreciation has two opposite effects on exports when firms are indebted in foreign currency: (i) a pro-competitive effect that increases both the amount of exports by firm (the intensive margin) and the number of firms (the extensive margin); and (ii) a balance-sheet effect that forces some firms to exit the export market and decreases the extensive margin. These results both provide an explanation for the negative reactions of trade after recent emerging market crises and document a finance-based empirical microfoundation to the 'exchange-rate disconnect puzzle'.

La crise monetaire turque de 2000/2001 : une analyse de l’echec du plan de stabilisation par le change du FMI

Cet article propose un examen empirique de l’echec du Plan de Stabilisation par le Change (PSC) mis en place sous l’impulsion du FMI en Turquie a partir de janvier 2000. Nous estimons un modele vectoriel a correction d’erreur a partir de donnees journalieres, afin d’evaluer statistiquement l’influence des principaux facteurs habituellement mis en cause dans l’echec du PSC turc, au premier rang desquels un secteur bancaire fragilise, un retablissement trop lent des finances publiques et une baisse trop rapide des taux d’interet. Alors que la banque centrale de Turquie n'avait plus aucun instrument autonome pour controler les evolutions monetaires, les resultats soulignent que le programme a cree un arbitrage entre assainissement des finances publiques et stabilite d’un secteur bancaire surexpose aux risques de change et de taux, hypothequant d’emblee tres fortement ses chances de reussite.Crise de change; Plan de Stabilisation par le Change; politique monetaire; Turquie

Fonction de reaction et politique monetaire en changes fixes : une nouvelle formulation appliquee a la Turquie

E42; E52; F31Crise de change; fonction de reaction; politique monetaire; programme de stabilisation par le change; Turquie