Index of internal asymmetries within the Eurozone

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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

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MONEY TALKS, by IIMR

‘Money talks’ is a series of mini-videos the Institute of International Monetary Research (IIMR) will start to release every week on the 18th of June, Monday.

The name of the series says it all: experts in money and central banking will be covering key concepts to understand better monetary economics in less than two minutes long videos. Tim Congdon (Chairman of the IIMR) and Geoffrey Wood (IIMR Academic Advisory Council) along with myself and many others to come will be addressing the fundamentals in money and banking to be able to understand how our monetary systems work and which are the roles and functions of modern central banks.

The topics address include the following:

Episode 1: What is Money?

Episode 2: What is the Central Bank?

Episode 3: What is the Monetary Base?

Episode 4: What is the Money Multiplier?

Episode 5: What does Monetary Policy consist of?

Episode 6: What is Central Bank Independence?

Episode 7: The Central Bank as the Lender of Last Resort

Episode 8: Bail outs and Bank Failures

Episode 9: Basel Rules

Episode 10: What os ‘Narrow Banking’?

Episode 11: Fiat Money

Episode 12: What is a monetary policy rule?

Episode 13: What is Monetarism?

Episode 14: Monetary Policy Tasks

But of course, these are just the ones we are starting with. The list will be expanded in the next few weeks and the aim is to produce a library of mini-videos that could be a good reference to search for short definitions on money, banking and central banking.

If you are interested in this project, please subscribe to the IIMR YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudZPVEs3S82iu2zb-QZfcK7pqnrHfPgO) to stay tuned.

As ever, comments and feedback most welcome!

 

Juan Castañeda

 

 

 

 

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A discussion on money and central banking with Tim Congdon and Geoffrey Wood

On the 13th of March (IEA, London) I had the pleasure to participate in the launch of the new MSc in Money, Banking and Central Banking (University of Buckingham, with the collaboration of the Institute of International Monetary Research), starting in September 2017; and I did it with two of the professors who will be teaching in the MSc, indeed two excellent and very well-known experts in the field: Professors Geoffrey Wood and Tim Congdon. I have known them both for long and shared research projects and co-authored works in money and central banking; and it was a privilege for me to have the chance to  introduce the new MSc, as well as to engage in a fascinating dialogue with them on very topical and key questions in monetary economics in our days: amongst others, ‘How is money determined? And how does this affect the economy?’; ‘Is a fractional reserve banking system inherently fragile?’; ‘Does the size of central banks’ balance sheet matter?’; ‘If we opt for inflation targeting as a policy strategy, which should be the variable to measure and target inflation?’; ‘Why the obsession amongst economists and academics with interest rates, and the disregard of money?”; ‘Who is to blame for the Global Financial Crisis, banks or regulators?’; ‘Does tougher bank regulation result in saver banks?’; ‘Is the US Fed conducting Quantitative Tightening in the last few months?’.

You can find the video with the full event here; with the presentation of the MSc in Money, Banking and Central Banking up to minute 9:20 and the discussion on the topics mentioned above onwards.  Several lessons can be learned from our discussion, and however evident they may sound, academics and policy-makers should be reminded of them again and again:

• Inflation and deflation are monetary phenomena over the medium and long term.
• Central banks‘ main missions are to preserve the purchasing power of the currency and maintain financial stability; and thus they should have never disregarded the analysis of money growth and its impact on prices and nominal income in the years running up to the Global Financial Crisis.
• A central bank acting as the lender of last resort of the banking sector does not mean rescuing every bank in trouble. Broke banks need to fail to preserve the stability of the banking system over the long term.
• The analysis of both the composition and the changes in central banks’ balance sheets is key to assess monetary conditions in the economy and ultimately make policy prescriptions.
• The analysis of the central banks’ decisions and operations cannot be done properly without the study of the relevant historical precedents: to learn monetary and central banking history is vital to understand current policies monetary questions.
• Tighter bank regulation, such as Basel III new liquidity ratios and the much higher capital ratios announced in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis, resulted in a greater contraction in the amount of money, and so it had even greater deflationary effects and worsened the crisis.

These are indeed key lessons and principles to apply should we want to achieve both monetary and financial stability over the medium and long term.

I hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did. As ever, comments and feedback will be most welcome.

Apply for the MSc here!

Juan Castaneda

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