ABSTRACT

Membership in a common currency area is thought to promote economic stability by facilitating macroeconomic convergence, but a country might give up important monetary policy tools that could help stabilize its economy following a shock. The effect of a common currency on macroeconomic volatility can therefore be ambiguous. This study examines five Central and Eastern European countries that joined the Eurozone since 2005; their differences, particularly with regard to the countries’ economic performance and pre-accession exchange-rate regimes, help drive a unique set of results. Structural breaks in the volatility of real output, consumption, and investment generally correspond to events other than Eurozone accession, and Vector Autoregressive methods show that global shocks have more of an impact on output volatility than do regional shocks or economic openness. Spillovers affect Latvia and Lithuania more than Estonia, Slovakia, or Slovenia, which suggests that a unified currency space might have difficulty managing idiosyncratic shocks.

摘要

人们认为，共同货币区的成员资格可以通过促进宏观经济趋同来促进经济稳定，但是一个国家可能会放弃重要的货币政策工具，以在遭受冲击后帮助稳定其经济。因此，通用货币对宏观经济波动的影响可能是模棱两可的。这项研究考察了自2005年以来加入欧元区的五个中欧和东欧国家。它们之间的差异，特别是在各国的经济表现和加入前的汇率制度方面，有助于取得一系列独特的成果。实际产出，消费和投资波动的结构性突破通常与除欧元区加入，向量自回归方法表明，与区域冲击或经济开放相比，全球冲击对产出波动的影响更大。溢出对拉脱维亚和立陶宛的影响要大于爱沙尼亚，斯洛伐克或斯洛文尼亚，这表明统一的货币空间可能难以管理特有的冲击。