Further Research by Members of the Shadow Council

Willem Buiter with Anne Sibert
»  Eurozone Entry of New EU Member States from Central Europe: Should they? Could they?”
will be published in Development and Transition, UNDP-LSE Newsletter, later in 2006
A brief summary is: yes, quite a few of them should and could, but probably only one will. The reason for the discrepancy is that the ECB and the less enlightened elements of the European Commission won’t let them, for reasons that would be laughable if the matter were not so serious.

Willem Buiter
»  It’s a long way to Copenhagen?
Motivated by optimistic official reports, especially by the World Bank’s recent Country Economic Memorandum for Turkey, Willem Buiter, Professor at the European Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science, argues that Turkey could become a true tiger economy. But with the institutions and policies of the second half of the 20th century, it could end up a mangy cat instead of a tiger.

Julian Callow
»  2006: The year of transition and synchronisation
In a Barclays Capital research note Julian Callow compares the emerging post-deflation strategy of the Bank of Japan to the monetary policy strategy of the ECB and finds some striking parallels.

Charles Wyplosz
»  European Monetary Union: The Dark Sides of a Major Success, Economic Policy April 2006
Wyplosz gives a positive assessment of EMU, while highlighting some flaws like an ill-designed Stability and Growth Pact. He finds a tension between stated principles and pragmatic actions but concludes that the Eurosystem has acted wisely so far.

Agnès Bénassy-Quéré with Eduard Turkisch
ECB-Governance in an Enlarged Europe, , »  Working Paper, Dezember 2005
The authors examine the new voting rules, which the ECB will adopt after Enlargement of the Eurozone. They calculate nationally desired interest rates and find that the ECB board will normally have the pivotal votes. Therefore, the "cost" of enlargement for the old members is restricted to the fact that the interest rate desired by the board is higher after enlargement.

Paul De Grauwe with Claudia Costa Storti from Banco de Portugal
Is Monetary Policy in the Eurozone Less Effective than in the US? »  CESifo Working Paper, November 2005
De Grauwe and Costa Storti perform a meta study of research on the effects of monetary policy in the US and in the Eurozone countries. They find that the widely asumed handicap of the ECB in the form of lower effectiveness of monetary policy due to rigidities in the Eurozone economies is not supported by economic research.

Thorsten Polleit with Dieter Gedesmeier from the ECB
Measures of Excess Liquidity, »  Discussion Paper, August 2005,
The paper gives an overview over the various measures of excess liquidity and lays out its theoretical underpinnings. The authors caution, that the practical usufulness relies on the stability of money demand, an emprirical question, which they do not address in this paper.

Daniel Gros with Ansgar Belke from University Hohenheim
Asymmetries in the Trans-Atlantic Monetary Policy Relationship: Does the ECB Follow the Fed?
»  CESifo Working Paper, March 2005 Only sometimes say Gros and Belke. Sometimes the ECB follows the Fed, sometimes it is the other way round.