La Suisse et la zone euro: votre monnaie, notre problème ? La possibilité d'un ancrage de jure

Cyriac Guillaumin and Guillaume Vallet

Revue d'économie politique, 2012, vol. 122, issue 5, 629-655

Abstract: With the recent tensions within the euro area, the Swiss franc appreciated sharply against the euro, playing the role of international safe-haven currency. Although Switzerland is not a member of the European Union (EU), its high degree of de facto integration to it make that such appreciation is transmitted to the real economy. Thus, if the independence and autonomy of Switzerland?s official currency in Europe has advantages, it also entails significant costs, particularly related to the special status of the Swiss franc. In this article we study the desirability and viability for Switzerland of a ?median? monetary integration to the EU to help ease the external constraint of the exchange rate, namely a de jure anchor of the Swiss franc on the euro. To answer this question, we focus on the origins of fluctuations in the exchange rate of the Swiss franc with a structural VAR model. Our results show that Switzerland would not have interest in adopting a hard peg with the euro. If the choice of such monetary regime may reduce the Swiss franc/euro volatility in the short-term, it would be accompanied in the medium term by significant sunk costs.

Keywords: Switzerland; European Union; Euro area; Exchange rate regime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=REDP_225_0629 (application/pdf)
http://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-politique-2012-5-page-629.htm (text/html)
free

Related works:
Working Paper: La Suisse et la zone euro: votre monnaie, notre problème ? La possibilité d'un ancrage de jure (2012)
Working Paper: La Suisse et la zone euro: votre monnaie, notre problème ? La possibilité d'un ancrage de jure (2011)
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:cai:repdal:redp_225_0629

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Revue d'économie politique from Dalloz
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire ().