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The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of Europe's structural problems and governance as the cause of the current euro area crisis. The euro may have led to bubbles, but member economies were not free of trouble before the euro. Many members were losing competitiveness and in need of removing structural rigidities. If anything, the euro was expected to encourage structural reform, by taking away the easy choice of monetary and fiscal expansion. We first discuss the relationship between the single currency and economic stability in Europe. We confirm the asymmetries that remained after the introduction of the euro and then discuss the governance overhaul taking place in Europe today. This overhaul was something that should have been done before introducing the euro, and its advancement may be the silver lining of this crisis. Finally, we touch upon the implications for Asia and Japan, from the point of view of the choice of exchange rate regime as a method to advance necessary reforms.

We study the curious patterns of gold holding and trading by central banks during 1979-2010. With the exception of several discrete step adjustments, central banks keep maintaining passive stocks of gold, independently of the patterns of the real price of gold. We also observe the synchronization of gold sales by central banks, as most reduced their positions in tandem, and their tendency to report international reserves valuation excluding gold positions. Our analysis suggests that the intensity of holding gold is correlated with 'global power' - by the history of being a past empire, or by the sheer size of a country, especially by countries that are or were the suppliers of key currencies. These results are consistent with the view that central bank's gold position signals economic might, and that gold retains the stature of a 'safe haven' asset at times of global turbulence. The under-reporting of gold positions in the international reserve/GDP statistics is consistent with loss aversion, wishing to maintain a sizeable gold position, while minimizing the criticism that may occur at a time when the price of gold declines.

This paper evaluates the extent of exchange rate coordination among Asian economies using a hypothetical Asian Currency Unit. Rising interdependence among Asian economies makes it vital for these economies to have a certain degree of exchange rate stability. However, the empirical evidence using an Asian Currency Unit suggests a widening deviation in exchange rate movements of the Asian currencies. The deviation has been driven by the adoption of different exchange rate regimes by the participating countries indicating diverse policy objectives. There are a number of institutions in the region that can assist exchange rate coordination and greater economic and financial integration. These institutions, including a multilateralized swap arrangement, a regional surveillance mechanism, and a bond fund; have to be significantly strengthened for them to play a role in fostering greater economic cooperation. The denomination of financial assets in the Asian Currency Unit in transactions involving these institutions would also enhance exchange rate cooperation.

Exchange market pressure (EMP) measures the pressure on a currency to depreciate. It adds to the actual depreciation a weighted combination of policy instruments used to ward off depreciation, such as interest rates and foreign exchange interventions, where the weights are their effectiveness. The key difficulty in the literature is how to identify these weights. We exploit the persistence of pressure and add instruments based on currency crisis theories to identify the weights, and we propose a simple IV regression to estimate them. An application to the European Monetary System crisis in 1992-1993 shows that a one percentage point higher interest rate wards off a depreciation of about 0.2 percent.

We argue that a higher share of the private sector in a country's external debt raises the incentive to stabilize the exchange rate. We present a simple model in which exchange rate volatility does not affect agents' welfare if all the debt is incurred by the government. Once we introduce private banks who borrow in foreign currency and lend to domestic firms, the monetary authority has an incentive to dampen the distributional consequences of exchange rate fluctuations. Our empirical results support the hypothesis that not only the level, but also the composition of foreign debt matters for exchange-rate policy.

Official and four alternative regime classification schemes based on observed exchange rate behaviour are used to examine the relationship with inflation and growth in developing countries. For an identical sample of observations from 73 countries for 1984-2001, only the scheme based on parallel rates suggests a significant effect (negative) of floating on growth. Floats that claim to be pegs, or have high exchange rate volatility, are the ones with lower growth. Hard pegs offer inflation benefits. Floating is not consistently associated with higher inflation than soft pegs, and any apparent association is a possible by-product of the design of the classification algorithms.

This paper develops a two-country model to investigate the circumstances under which it is beneficial to participate in a currency area. It captures both the real and monetary arguments suggested by the optimum currency area literature in a simple monetary model of trade with nominal rigidities. The net benefits that one country expects from participation in a currency union increase with: the correlation of real shocks between countries; the degree of international labor mobility; the degree of adjustment provided by a fiscal tool; the difference between the inflationary bias of the domestic authority and the inflationary bias of the authority of the currency union; the variability of domestic monetary shocks; the extent of the deadweight and efficiency gains deriving from the adoption of a single currency. The same net benefits decrease with: the variability of real shocks; the variability of foreign monetary shocks; and the correlation of monetary shocks between countries. The effect of the degree of openness on the net benefits is ambiguous. This last result contrasts with the usual argument that the more open economies are the better candidates they make for a currency area.

We study the apparent disconnect between what countries announce to be their exchange rate regime and what they de facto implement. Even though discrepancies between announcements and de facto polices are frequent, there is a lack of understanding of actual patterns and underlying reasons. We contribute to the literature by identifying a number of robust stylized facts by means of an in-depth analysis of a large cross-country dataset. A key insight is that countries that operate under intermediate de facto regimes tend to announce fixed or flexible exchange rate regimes. The exact nature of deviations is related to country characteristics such as trade structure, financial development, and financial openness. Furthermore, regime discrepancies have followed secular trends, which are most likely related to financial globalization and changes in monetary policy design.

This paper presents a multifactor asset pricing model for currency, bond, and stock returns for ten emerging markets to investigate the effect of the exchange rate regime on the cost of capital and the integration of emerging financial markets. Since there is evidence that a fixed exchange rate regime reduces the currency risk premia demanded by foreign investors, the tentative conclusion is that a fixed exchange rate regime system can help reduce the cost of capital in emerging markets., À l'aide d'un modèle multifactoriel d'évaluation des actifs mettant à contribution les données relatives aux rendements observés sur les marchés de devises, d'obligations et d'actions de dix économies émergentes, l'auteur analyse l'incidence du choix de régime de change sur le coût du capital et l'intégration des marchés financiers des économies émergentes. D'après les résultats qu'il obtient, l'adoption d'un régime de changes fixes entraîne une baisse de la prime de risque de change exigée par les investisseurs étrangers. La conclusion que l'auteur en tire provisoirement est qu'un tel régime peut aider à réduire le coût du capital dans les économies émergentes.

Recent studies on the growth effects of exchange rate regimes offer a wide range of different, sometimes contradictory results. In this paper, we systematically compare three prominent contributions in this field. Using a common data set, a common specification, and common estimation methods, we argue that the contradictory findings can be explained by the fact that these studies use regime classifications which reflect fundamentally different aspects of exchange rate policy.

The author investigates the quantitative importance of the expenditure-switching effect by developing and estimating a structural sticky-price model nesting both producer currency pricing (PCP) and local currency pricing (LCP) settings. The author aims to provide empirical evidence of the magnitude of the benefits to be gained from exchange rate flexibility in terms of expenditure switching, and to contribute to the ongoing debate regarding the optimal exchange rate regime. In the author's model, the size of the expenditure-switching effect is determined by the degree of price stickiness, the fraction of firms employing PCP versus LCP, the distribution margin, and the elasticity of substitution between domestic and foreign tradable goods. The model is estimated for three small open economies: Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The empirical results suggest that, among the three countries, the magnitude of the expenditure switching by domestic agents is relatively small for the United Kingdom, and comparatively large for Canada; the distribution margin in the United Kingdom is exceptionally high, which limits the degree of domestic expenditure switching initiated by nominal exchange rate movements. Moreover, expenditure switching by foreign distributors is comparatively small for Australia and Canada, since a larger fraction of Australian and Canadian firms adopt LCP for their export price-setting., L'auteure s'attache à mesurer l'ampleur des transferts de dépenses imputables aux variations du taux de change. Pour ce faire, elle élabore et estime un modèle structurel à prix rigides autorisant une facturation dans la monnaie des pays producteurs et dans celle des pays importateurs. Elle s'efforce de recueillir des indications empiriques sur la valeur des avantages que procureraient les régimes de changes flottants en favorisant des transferts de dépenses. Elle entend prendre ainsi part au débat en cours sur le choix d'un régime de change optimal. Dans le modèle, la taille des transferts de dépenses dépend du degré de rigidité des prix, de la proportion des entreprises qui fixent leurs prix dans la monnaie de leur pays d'attache plutôt que dans celle de leurs clients étrangers, de la marge de distribution et du niveau de substituabilité des biens échangeables produits localement et importés. L'auteure estime son modèle pour trois petites économies ouvertes : l'Australie, le Canada et le Royaume-Uni. Selon les résultats empiriques, les transferts de dépenses des agents nationaux sont plutôt faibles au Royaume-Uni, mais relativement importants au Canada; la marge de distribution étant particulièrement élevée au Royaume-Uni, l'ampleur des transferts de dépenses attribuables aux variations du taux de change nominal s'y trouve limitée. En Australie et au Canada, les transferts dont sont responsables les distributeurs étrangers sont plutôt modestes, car une bonne partie des entreprises résidentes facturent leurs exportations dans la monnaie des pays importateurs.

We investigate monetary-policy autonomy under different exchange-rate regimes in small, open European economies during the 1980s and 1990s. We find no systematic link between ex post monetary-policy autonomy and exchange rate regimes. This result is enforced for countries/periods with alternative nominal targets. Our interpretation of the results is that over the medium and long term following an ‘independent’ target for monetary policy, which does not deviate much from the targets of those countries to which one is closely financially integrated, is as constraining as locking the exchange rate to some particular level

This paper argues that, in contrast to the popular bipolar view on exchange rate choices, intermediate regimes in general and regional exchange rate systems such as the European Monetary System (EMS) in particular should not be ruled out per se even in today's world of highly mobile capital. The paper highlights that the 1992/93 crisis of the EMS? Exchange Rate Mechanism was a crisis of an exchange rate system and not just the collapse of unilateral pegs pursued by individual countries. Based on an assessment of credibility of the EMS before and during the crisis, the paper discusses distinct features that add to the credibility of regional exchange rate systems. It reasons that a system that is built around well-defined rules, and which is managed very carefully and co-operatively according to those rules, could be both credible and sustainable even in the 21st century.

We show that the credibility gain from permanently committing to a fixed exchange rate by joining the European Monetary Union can outweigh the loss from giving up independent monetary policy if the domestic monetary authority does not enjoy full credibility. Using a DSGE model, this paper shows that when the central bank enjoys only limited credibility a pegged exchange rate regime yields a lower loss compared to an inflation targeting policy, even if this policy ranking would be reversed in a full-credibility environment. There exists an initial stock of credibility that must be achieved for a policy-maker to adopt inflation targeting over a strict exchange rate targeting regime. Full credibility is not a precondition, but exposure to foreign and financial shocks and high steady state inflation make joining the EMU relatively more attractive for a given level of credibility. The theoretical results are consistent with empirical evidence we provide on the relationship between credibility and monetary regimes using a Bank of England survey of 81 central banks.

Lack of commitment in monetary policy leads to the well known Barro-Gordon inflation bias. In this paper, we argue that two phenomena associated with the time inconsistency problem have been overlooked in the exchange rate debate. We show that, absent commitment, independent monetary policy can also induce expectation traps - that is, welfare-ranked multiple equilibria - and perverse policy responses to real shocks - that is, an equilibrium policy response that is welfare inferior to policy inaction. Both possibilities imply higher macroeconomic volatility under flexible exchange rates than under fixed exchange rates.

The successful start of Economic and Monetary Union in Europe has prompted more research into the issue of exchange rate regimes and if there were any lessons to be drawn from the European experiment for other regions in the world. We review the relevant issues from an Optimum Currency Area perspective. The focus on issues relating to the suitability of switching to a common currency based on notions of economic distance and the correlation of aggregate economic shocks. The empirical evidence presented in this paper shows that the cost of monetary union declined substantially in some target countries while it appears to have risen in others. This leads to some interesting policy implications also for the new EU members.

This paper analyses the choices of exchange rate regimes in developing countries since 1980. Static and dynamic random-effects multinominal panel models are estimated using simulation-based techniques. Explanatory variables include OCA fundamentals, stabilization considerations, currency crises factors, and political and institutional features. The results reveal strong state dependence in regime choices.

A two sector small open economy model developed by Corden (1991, 2002) is used to analyse the impact of sudden stops in capital inflows on an internal and external equilibrium and to explore the merits of disposing of the nominal exchange rate as policy tool in rectifying real exchange rate misalignments. It is shown how the economy's sectoral demand properties determine the extent of recession associated with real exchange rate adjustment that is neither engineered by nominal exchange rate changes nor brought about by a decline in nontraded goods prices. The conclusion is drawn that, when deciding on the design of exchange rate regimes, the structural characteristics of the economy ought to be considered so as to appropriately strengthen its capacity to cope with shocks in the form of negative swings in capital inflows.

We investigate official and implicit nominal anchors for six Central and Eastern European countries during 1994 to 2002. Most of these countries have moved from fixed to more flexible regimes and adopted a form of inflation targeting. Achieving their new official targets has had mixed success. Furthermore, we find some evidence for implicit exchange rate targeting. It seems to be most pronounced for Slovenia, whereas the results for Hungary and Poland match the officially announced regimes. Consequently, moving officially to more flexible arrangements does not always lead to a de facto move.

A small expectations-expanded "Mundell-Fleming" model is built for the European Union Accession Countries and estimated to assess the optimality of different exchange rate regimes (a peg and a float) through a simple welfare function. Floating appears as the best option for most of the countries in our sample, and this conclusion is robust to changes in the weights of the welfare function. The "shock absorbing" qualities of the regimes for different types of innovations is assessed via a VAR and a structural model, and here again the float seems to outperform a harder regime, in the emergence of temporary shocks.

In this paper I investigate the relevance of the exchange rate regime for macroeconomic stability. I simulate hypothetical macroeconomic developments under different regimes in Sweden during the period 1972 -1996. The main question is how stable output would have been if Sweden had had a floating exchange rate regime. Would it have been better with a floating exchange rate than the actual quasi-fixed regime? Also the development with an irrevocably fixed exchange rate is investigated. The results indicate that the central bank can stabilize much of the macroeconomic disturbances under a floating exchange rate, but still the volatility of the macroeconomic variables under the hypothetical floating exchange rate regime is about the same as under the actual quasi-fixed regime.

Here the author empirically estimates if the different monetary and exchange rate frameworks observed in the Accession Countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics do yield different outcomes in terms of level and variance of a set of nominal and real variables. The author follows and extends the methodology developed by Kuttner and Posen (2001), who perform a combined analysis of the individual effects of exchange rate regimes, central bank independence and announced targets in nominal variables, for a large set of developed and developing countries, and estimate that a setup that combines a free float, an independent monetary authority and inflation targeting yields an outcome that mimics the price stabilization advantages of a hard peg without its drawbacks in terms of extreme volatility. This sample of countries, not covered by the Kuttner and Posen study, supports their conclusions, for both nominal and real variables, testing for both the individual and combined effects of the frameworks, indicating that a flexible exchange rate regime, coupled with a independent monetary authority and inflation targeting, would be Pareto-improving when compared to harder regimes.