 European Monetary Union or Hard EMS?David Currie, Paul Levine () and Joseph Pearlman No 472, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research Abstract: This paper contributes to the debate engendered by the Delors Report on the issue of European Monetary Union. It focuses on the options of a strengthened (or hard-) EMS, with a commitment to a fixed exchange rate relative to the Deutschmark, or a European central bank with full monetary union (EMU). Under hard-EMS, an anti-inflationary reputation is acquired by all as a result of Bundesbank credibility. As regards EMU, it is possible that too rapid a move through the latter stages of the Delors process will produce a central bank with little or no anti-inflation credibility. Here we make starkest assumption of no credibility under EMU, and compare it with hard-EMS for various supply and demand shocks using a two-bloc model, the latter exhibiting short-run wage/price stickiness but with long run natural rate properties. A non-EMS regime with floating exchange rates is used to examine the incentive compatibility of hard-EMS and EMU, with a cooperative reputational regime acting as a benchmark. Keywords: Credibility; European Monetary System; Inflation; Monetary Union (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:472 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK. |
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