The External Policy of the Euro Area: Organizing for Foreign Exchange Intervention

C. Randall Henning

No WP06-4, Working Paper Series from Peterson Institute for International Economics

Abstract: Scholarship on European integration has extensively debated the external character of the monetary union. The institutions of exchange rate policymaking bear substantially on the euro area's role in international monetary conflict and cooperation. This working paper examines the institutional arrangements for foreign exchange intervention within the euro area and the policymaking surrounding the market operations of autumn 2000—the only case to date of euro area intervention in currency markets. Drawing on interviews of officials in finance ministries, central banks, European institutions, and international organizations, as well as public sources, the paper specifies the division of labor among the European Central Bank (ECB), Eurogroup, and other European actors and compares that arrangement with corresponding arrangements in the G-7 partners. It concludes, among other things, that (1) the interinstitutional understanding within the euro area gives substantial latitude to the ECB, greater latitude than held by central banks in its G-7 partners, (2) but the understanding is susceptible to renegotiation over time, and (3) economic divergence within the euro area potentially threatens the ability of the monetary union to act coherently externally.

Keywords: Foreign Exchange Intervention; Exchange Rate Policy and Policymaking; Economic and Monetary Union; Euro-Dollar Exchange Rate; European Central Bank; Eurogroup; G-7 Cooperation; Transatlantic Monetary Relations; Political Economy of Exchange Rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F31 F32 F33 F42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-eec, nep-ifn and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.piie.com/publications/working-papers/e ... xchange-intervention (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp06-4

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Peterson Institute for International Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peterson Institute webmaster ().