23. Economic and Monetary Union

2019 ◽  
pp. 343-357
Author(s):  
Amy Verdun

This chapter provides an introduction to economic and monetary union (EMU). It describes the key components of EMU and what happens when countries join. EMU was the result of decades of collaboration and learning, which have been subdivided here into three periods: 1969–91, taking us from the European Council’s first agreement to set up EMU to Maastricht, when the European Council included EMU in the Treaty on European Union (TEU); 1992–2002, from when plans for EMU were being developed to the irrevocable fixing of exchange rates; and 2002 onwards, once EMU had been established, and euro banknotes and coins were circulating in member states. Next, the chapter reviews various theoretical explanations, both economic and political, accounting for why EMU was created and looks at some criticisms of EMU. Finally, the chapter discusses how EMU has fared under the global financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis. These crises brought to the fore various imperfections in the design of EMU. This section discusses what changes have been made since 2009 to address those flaws and at what we may expect in the years to come.

Author(s):  
Amy Verdun

This chapter examines the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), focusing on its key components and what happens when countries join. EMU has been an integral part of European integration since the early 1970s. Member states agreed that there should be economic and monetary convergence prior to launching EMU. However, there are some member states (such as the UK) that did not want to join EMU. The chapter first explains what economic and monetary policy is before discussing various theoretical explanations, both economic and political, accounting for why EMU was created. It also considers some criticisms of EMU and how EMU has fared under the global financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis. It concludes by reflecting on what the future of the European Union will be with EMU in place.


Author(s):  
Nauro F. Campos ◽  
Paul De Grauwe ◽  
Yuemei Ji

Structural reform policies move like the business cycle. There are moments when these are implemented with great fervour and others when they are put on the back burner or even dismantled. After the global financial crisis, and in particular the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, many countries were forced by creditor countries or were self-imposed to apply deep reforms to their product markets and especially to their labour markets. Now that Europe is recovering, the pressure to implement structural reforms has abated....


Author(s):  
Alexia Thomaidou ◽  
Dimitris Kenourgios

This chapter investigates the impact of the Global Financial Crisis and the European Sovereign Debt Crisis in ETFs across regions and segments. In particular, two tests are taking place, with the first one to examine if there is evidence of contagion effect and the second one to test the affection of risks in each pair of ETFs. The evidence across the stable period and the two crisis periods suggests the existence of the transmission of shocks from the Global Financial ETF to regional and sectoral ETFs. However, there is evidence that some of the ETFs remain less unaffected during both crises and some of them are immune. Moreover, the authors examine the impact of several control variables, which represent various risks, to the correlation of each pair of ETFs and the results show the influence of the interest rate risk and interbank liquidity risk during the Global Financial Crisis and the European Sovereign Debt Crisis.


Equilibrium ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomas Heryan ◽  
Jan Ziegelbauer

The aim of the paper is to estimate, how the volatility of yields of the Greek bonds affects yields’ volatilities of bonds in selected European countries during the period of the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area. We obtained data for 10-year bonds in a weekly frequency from January 2006 till the end of December 2014. To make a comparison of pre-crisis period, we firstly investigate a bond yields’ volatility before 15th September 2008, when U.S. Leman Brothers bankrupted and the global financial crisis had been reflected in full. However, the period of the global financial crisis could also negatively affect the development of government bonds. Therefore, the period after Leman Brothers’ bankruptcy has been excluded and our crisis period starts after 23rd April 2010, when Greece asked the IMF for financial help and the sovereign debt crisis had been reflected in full. Volatility models GARCH (1,1), IGARCH (1,1) and TARCH (1,1) were used as an estimation method. To examine the risk premium of all GIIPS economies (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain), we also compared the whole investigation with the developments of each spread against the yields of German government bonds. Our results clearly proved not only big differences between pre-crisis and crisis period, but also differences in output with the bond yield spreads. It was concluded that  there has been a higher impact of the Greek bond yields, as well as yield spreads volatility in 2010 and 2011, while it is on the lower level in pre-crisis period.


Author(s):  
John Goddard ◽  
John O. S. Wilson

‘The global financial crisis and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis’ describes the chain of events in the US financial crisis that then triggered the Eurozone banking collapse. It outlines the problems in US mortgage-backed securities, the collapse of three of the ‘big five’ investment banks (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch), and the actions of the US Federal Reserve and the Treasury. Several major European banks also foundered at the height of the financial crisis as a consequence of the US crisis and, by the end of 2014, five Eurozone member countries—Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Cyprus—had received bailout loans from the EU and International Monetary Fund, conditional on the implementation of tough austerity measures.


2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (60) ◽  
Author(s):  
Horst Dieter Moller ◽  
Tales Vital

The objective of this article is to show the perspectives of the euro area sovereign debt crisis for the Brazilian economy. The euro area sovereign debt crisis, beginning in 2010, could be seen as fallout of the global financial crisis of 2008/09. The ways to the crisis for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain were different: Credit booms and housing bubbles, banking crises, unsustainable public indebting. The impacts on Brazil were felt in 2011 and 2012 with the Brazilian economy almost stagnating. The article evaluates the impacts of the global financial crisis 2008/09 on the Brazilian economy through real and monetary channels, as well as through the contagion of expectations, to find similarities with the present crisis. The main influence was the fall of Brazilian exportations and the credit crunch following the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. The article supposes that the impacts of the euro area crisis shall be less problematic than that of the global financial crisis of 2008/09, because exportations are geographically more diversified and a credit crunch could be confronted by the BNDES and the public banks in Brazil. But the main argument is that the stability of Brazilian institutions, the geographical diversification of exportations and the increasing demand for commodities by the emerging markets in Asia will soften the impacts of the present crisis for Brazil, supposing that contagion of the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area will not expressively hit the more important economic powers in Europe and the world. The causes of the stagnating Brazilian economy in 2012 probably are not only the problems in the euro area.


2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irfan Akbar Kazi ◽  
Mohamed Mehanaoui ◽  
Farhan Akbar

<p>This article investigates shift-contagion as defined by Forbes and Rigobon (2002) in 16 OECD member economies during most recent financial crisis i.e. global financial crisis (2008-2009) and European sovereign debt crisis (2009-2012), using multivariate asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation model developed by Cappiello et al. (2006). The empirical analyses provide substantial evidence of shifts in the dynamic correlations and hence reconfirm shift-contagion during the global financial crisis that originated from U.S. However, there is no evidence in support of shift-contagion during the European sovereign debt crisis which originated from events in Greece. The results provide important implications for investors and policy makers.</p>


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