How has the Euro performed? Are the economies of the Eurozone countries more homogeneous today than in 1999?
The 2017 optimality index
Professor Pedro Schwartz and myself have conducted a research to (1) assess the trend in macroeconomic imbalances within the Eurozone since 1999 and (2) compare it to those in the US dollar monetary area. This is an extension of the research paper published last year in Economic Affairs (October, 2017), ‘How Functional is the Eurozone? An Index of European Economic Integration Through the Single Currency’. We have collected 10 different economic indicators per country (that is, for the 19 Eurozone Member States and 50 US states plus Washington DC) to measure how homogeneous or asymmetric the Eurozone Member States’ economies are, and calculated an overall index of economic dispersion, as well as four separate sub-indices to measure for asymmetries as regards (1) cycle synchronicity, (2) public finances, (3) competitiveness and (4) monetary and credit growth. The overall index can be interpreted as a measure of macroeconomic dispersion and thus of the asymmetries existing within the currency area.
In a nutshell, what the calculations and indices tell us is the following:
- Overall, the economies of the Eurozone Member States are less homogeneous today than in 1999. Integration did deteriorate even during the ‘good years’ (the expansionary phase of the cycle; specifically, a 86% accumulated increase in macroeconomic asymmetries from 1999 to 2006.
- During both the Global Financial Crisis and the Eurozone Crisis asymmetries escalated, in particular those regarding differences in competitiveness across Member States. Since 2015 the overall index of dispersion had shown a slight recovery: the new fiscal measures adopted at the EU level, along with the adjustment in costs and prices in those Member States mostly affected by the crises, seem to have been effective. In addition, the new programme of Quantitative Easing by the ECB, which began in 2015, has also helped, by reducing monetary growth dispersion across the Member States.
- However, this positive trend has been reversed in 2017, due to a deterioration in the competitiveness and monetary dispersion indices. This raises concerns about the stability of the Eurozone, since it shows that the return to macroeconomic stability and integration to something like pre-crisis levels is not an easy task even in times of economic growth. It also shows that the changes introduced in the euro architecture during the crisis have not been as effective as hoped.
For further details, you can access the summary of our project here: https://www.mv-pt.org/staff-research. You can also access the tables and figures with the comparison with the indices of dispersion in the USA here. These indices are now part of the research agenda of the Institute of International Monetary Research (IIMR) and an update with new figures will be published every year.
Note: Euro-12 and Euro-19 overall index of dispersion, 1999=100 (https://www.mv-pt.org/staff-research). The higher the value of the index the greater asymmetries are.
A full academic article by Pedro Schwartz and myself with further explanations on the figures and the calculations will follow soon. As always, comments most welcome!
Juan Castañeda
the old lady of threadneedle street 