Smoothing Asymmetric Shocks vs. Redistribution in the Euro Area: A Simple Proposal for Dealing with Mistrust in the Euro Area

Heikki Oksanen

No 5817, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: The euro area will not have a centralised budget and smoothing of country-specific asymmetric shocks via private financial markets will develop only slowly. Mistrust among the governments has caused rigid, even pro-cyclical fiscal policies. Smoothing mechanisms are absent due to the fear that the transfers would develop into permanent redistribution. For removing these deficiencies we propose a transfer mechanism to be managed in periods of seven years so that the cumulative balance of each country is cleared in equal instalments during the subsequent 7-year period. The transfers would smoothen asymmetric shocks and alleviate the rigidity of the fiscal rules.

Keywords: euro; monetary union; smoothing shocks; fiscal transfers; government budget (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E42 E62 H10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp5817.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ces:ceswps:_5817

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe (wohlrabe@ifo.de).