European Commission Training and Mobility of Researchers (2007)
Salvador Barrios, Documento De Trabajo, Jacques Mélitz, Patrick Messerlin, Eric Strobl, Ellen Voigt, ...
* This work has benefited from comments received during visits
Programme in Economic Policy (2007)
Jacques Mélitz, Frédéric Zumer, Robert Schuman, Centre Advanced Studies
Policy provides a framework for the presentation and development of ideas and research that can constitute the basis for informed policy-making in any area to which economic reasoning can make a...
Fiscal Policy Independence in a Monetary Union
Masson, Paul R, Mélitz, Jacques
Do plans for a monetary union in Europe call for limits on the freedom of the member countries to use fiscal policy? To provide a tentative answer, we simulate the IMF model MULTIMOD, given various...
North, South and Distance in the Gravity Model
It is generally assumed that distance in the gravity model strictly reflects frictions impeding bilateral trade. However, distances North-South could also reflect differences in factor endowment that...
Trade Costs, Trade Balances and Current Accounts: An Application of Gravity to Multilateral Trade
Fazio, Giorgio, MacDonald, Ronald, Mélitz, Jacques
In this paper we test the well-known hypothesis of Obstfeld and Rogoff (2000) that trade costs are the key to explaining the so-called Feldstein-Horioka puzzle. Using a gravity framework in an...
Labour Market Adjustment, Social Spending and the Automatic Stabilizers in the OECD
The macroeconomic literature on automatic stabilization tends to focus on taxes and dismiss the relevance of government expenditure, aside from unemployment compensation. Our results go sharply...
Interregional and International Risk Sharing and Lessons for EMU
Jacques Mélitz, Frédéric Zumer
currency; economic integration; EMU; Euro; European Central Bank; political economy
What are the prospects that risk-sharing in EMU will ever attain the levels in the US? So far as risk-sharing in the US depends on interregional transfers through the budget of the federal...
Monetary Discipline, Germany, and the European Monetary System
This paper explores the hypothesis that the non-German members of the European Monetary System (EMS) draw benefits from the system because of the monetary discipline that it imposes upon them. The...
Monetary Discipline and Cooperation in the European Monetary System: A Synthesis
This paper tries to explain how, despite its fundamental asymmetry, the European Monetary System may benefit all its members. I argue that the high-inflation members obtain benefits of increased...
German Reunification and Exchange Rate Policy in the EMS
This stresses that the impact of German reunification on the DM is affected by current plans to move toward monetary union in the European Community. The fundamental value of the DM is different...
Mélitz, Jacques, Zumer, Frédéric
This paper produces estimates of regional redistribution and stabilization through the central government budget in Canada, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. The estimates rest on...
The Dynamic Stability of the European Monetary System
Mélitz, Jacques, Michel, Philippe
The European Monetary System (EMS) has proven to work remarkably well thus far, despite three major realignments. We make an attempt to explain the dynamic stability of the system. This attempt gives...
The Prospect of a Depreciating Dollar and Possible Tension Inside the EMS
The depreciation of the dollar can lead to conflict within the European Monetary System. In order to develop this theme, I assume that the preferences of German policy-makers are more strongly...
The European Monetary System and the Franc-Mark Asymmetry
Cohen, Daniel, Mélitz, Jacques, Oudiz, Gilles
What purpose does the European Monetary System serve? Who benefits from it? Is it a Deutschmark zone? Or could one argue that, despite the asymmetrical positions of France and Germany, the System...
The Macroeconomic Implications of Financial Deregulation
Bordes, Christian, Mélitz, Jacques
This paper explores the possible macroeconomic consequences of financial deregulation in an institutional environment where deregulation raises risks in banking. The central bank is assumed to...
Business Debt and Default in France
Bordes, Christian, Mélitz, Jacques
On the basis of quarterly data in 1977-87 and the use of the Engle-Granger method of co-integration, we find that real and financial factors, insolvency and illiquidity, are all important, separate...
The discussion of monetary policy in France, which is intended for a chapter in a general handbook on monetary policy that will cover a number of other countries as well, begins with the early...
This review article discusses the recent document titled `One Market, One Money' in which the European Commission develops its case for European monetary union. After examining the monetary issues,...
A Suggested Reformulation of the Theory of Optimal Currency Areas
In contrast to conventional analyses of monetary union between two particular countries or sets of countries, this paper treats the possible expansion of a given currency area as a continuous...
National Insurance Against Unevenly Distributed Shocks in a European Monetary Union
We examine proposals to introduce in the European Community national insurance against unevenly distributed shocks. This would operate differently from tax and government spending activities that now...
Reflections on the Emergence of a Single Market for Bank Reserves in a European Monetary Union
The emergence of a single interbank market for reserves in the EC following monetary union raises a basic dilemma for policy. Either competition is allowed to decide the location of the interbank...
The Theory of Optimum Currency Areas, Trade Adjustment and Trade
This paper seeks to integrate more closely the theory of optimum currency areas with the theory of international trade. The currency area is considered as a continuous variable ranging from zero to...
Unification and the Policy Predicament in Germany
Hughes Hallett, Andrew, Ma, Yue, Mélitz, Jacques
We argue that wages have increased so far ahead of labour productivity in East Germany as to produce a problem that will continue to hound German policy-makers for the next two decades. Despite rapid...
The Role of Government Aid to Firms during the Transition to a Market Economy: Russia 1992-94
Mélitz, Jacques, Waysand, Claire
The paper develops two economic grounds for gradualism in the context of the Russian move towards a market economy: one for the support of output through subsidies, another for similar support...
New Empirical Evidence on the Costs of European Monetary Union
Erkel-Rousse, Hélène, Mélitz, Jacques
In order to assess the costs of a European Monetary Union, we use a structural VAR approach based on the long-run identifying scheme pioneered by Blanchard and Quah and extended by others. We then...
Mélitz, Jacques, Weber, Axel A
In order to study the costs/benefits of a monetary union between Germany and France, we attempt to go beyond a mere focus on asymmetries and examine what each country would have lost or gained had...
This paper assesses how monetary authorities behave and how they interact. Pooled data for the 15 members of the European Union except Luxembourg and five other OECD countries serves to answer these...
Trade and the Number of Optimum Currency Areas in the World
Artis, Michael J, Kohler, Marion, Mélitz, Jacques
This paper employs worldwide data on output and bilateral trade in order to identify optimum currency areas (OCA’s) on a global basis. By retaining only two of the many criteria that have been...
English-Language Dominance, Literature and Welfare
The tendency of a single world market to privilege the translation of English fiction and poetry into other languages for reading or listening enjoyment may damage the production of world literature...
Interregional and International Risk Sharing and Lessons for EMU
Mélitz, Jacques, Zumer, Frédéric
How much risk sharing takes place between regions within countries, between countries internationally, and what are the lessons for EMU? We study these questions based on regional data from the US,...
Geography, Trade and Currency Union
This Paper reports on four basic results of tests of the standard gravity equation. First, geography can serve to reflect comparative advantage as well as transportation costs. Second, the effect of...
The significance of a common language in foreign trade hinges on translation as well as the ability to communicate directly. In fact, without admitting the facility of translation from one or two...
What are the prospects that risk sharing in EMU will ever attain the levels in the US? So far as the risk sharing in the US depends on interregional transfers through the budget of the federal...
Non-Discretionary and Automatic Fiscal Policy in the EU and the OECD
Official adjustments of the budget balance to the cycle merely assume that the only category of government spending that responds automatically to the cycle is unemployment compensation. But...
Prospects for Monetary Unions after the Euro
Paul De Grauwe, Jacques Mélitz
The process of monetary integration in Europe began amid widespread skepticism among economists about the project. But today the success of the euro has prompted a reconsideration of whether monetary...