1. Inflation convergence in the EMU
- Author
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Arakelian, Menelaos Karanasos, Yiannis Karavias, Panagiotis Koutroumpis, and Aris Kartsaklas
- Subjects
Inflation ,Economics and Econometrics ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Inflation differentials ,05 social sciences ,Convergence (economics) ,International economics ,Absolute convergence ,Accession ,Stationarity tests ,0502 economics and business ,Econometrics ,Economics ,Pairwise comparison ,Unit root ,Unit root tests ,050207 economics ,European monetary union ,Convergence ,Robustness (economics) ,European Monetary Union ,Finance ,050205 econometrics ,media_common - Abstract
We study the convergence properties of inflation rates among the countries of the European Monetary Union over the period 1980–2013. Recently developed panel unit root/stationarity tests cannot reject the stationarity hypothesis. This implies that some countries have been in the process of converging absolutely or relatively. By using a clustering algorithm we statistically detect three absolute convergence clubs in the pre-euro period, which comprise early accession countries. In particular, Luxembourg clusters with Austria and Belgium, while a second sub-group includes Germany and France and the third The Netherlands and Finland. We also detect two separate clusters of early accession countries in the post-1997 period: a sub-group with Germany, Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg, and one with France and Finland. For the rest of the countries/cases we find evidence of divergent behavior. Robustness is checked by testing pairwise convergence in a Bayesian framework. The outcome broadly confirms our findings.
- Published
- 2016
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