How to complete a monetary union

8 important questions on How to complete a monetary union

Why are there no liquidity crises in stand-alone countries? How is this applicable to a MU?

The CB can be forced to provide all the necessary liquidityto the sovereign > guarantee for the bondholder. Same can be done in MU, if CB acts as LOLR > guarantee liquidity will always be available

How does a liquidity crisis self-fulfill? How can the CB prevent this?

Banks borrow short and lend long > great fragility in banking sector > when deposit holders want to get their cash, banks cannot provide > sensitive to movements of distrust (people might expect a crisis, all ask for their deposits at the same time > crisis actually happens)

Banks need cash and sell assets by lowering price > solvency crisis possible. CB can act as LOLR, which gives confidence > rarely have to step in. Same for government bonds.

How are LOLR operations called by the ECB? Describe them.

OMT: Outright monetary transactions. A number of conditions attached to it: countries have to apply for it and commit to austerity programs.
In the program, the ECB buys government bonds that mature in 1-3 years. The aim is to prevent divergence in short-term bond yiels and that the ECBs MP is transmitted equally to all the Eurozone members.
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Why should national budgets and debt be consolidated into one central component? What does this require?

1. create common fiscal authority that can issue debt in a currency under the control of that authority > financial markets cannot force member states into default
2. a mechanism of automatic transfers can be organized (insurance)

Requires far-reaching political union, Eurozone is unwilling to have that.

What step can the Eurozone take towards a political union?

1. joint issue of common bonds: countries become jointly liable for the debt; but moral hazard
2. banking union:  allows the cost of resolving banking crisis to be spread out; implies some form of fiscal union, in times of crisis there must be an institution with sufficient resources to intervene (recapitalize banks)

Countries often are unwilling to hand over the national instruments of economic policies to European institutions. What measures strenghening control of budgetary policies and macroeconomic policies have been put into place?

1. tightening of mutual control on each budgetary situation
2. stronger sanctioning procedure
3. European Semester (requires national governments to present annual budgets)
4. monitoring of macroeconomic variables aimed at detecting imbalances

How does political integration affect the optimality of a MU?

1. a central budget that can be used as a redistributive device
2. to issue some part of the national debts jointly (reduces scope for liquidity crisis individual countries)
3. have some form of coordination of those areas that can generate macroeconomic shocks

What is meant by an omitted deep variable?

In the past, German MU had a strong sense of common purpose > the deep variable that made the MU and PU possible. Weakly at the European level; without common purpose further progress into political union is difficult > enlargement of Eurozone weakens this sense even more

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