همگرایی در سیاست های پولی بین کشورهای داوطلب و اتحادیه اروپا

We compare the convergence with German monetary policy of the transition-economy candidates for EU membership, of non-transition candidates, and of countries that have recently joined the EU. Significant linkages exist between German base money stock and that of recent members of the EU; the same holds true for non-transition-economy candidates. Among the transition economies, the ability to follow the policies of the Bundesbank is weaker or non-existent. Such weak policy coordination suggests the need for strengthening the financial sectors of these countries and for a period in which they tie their policies more closely to the ECB.

The successful accession to membership in the European Union (EU) by the current transition-economy applicants, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Poland and the Baltic republics, will depend to a large extent on their ability to align themselves with the institutions and the macroeconomic policies of the EU. Although structural change and institutional adaptation to EU norms will also be important in this process, in this paper we focus on the convergence of monetary policy between the candidate countries and the EU. The convergence of monetary policy between the EU and the candidate countries will be a necessary, though by no means sufficient, condition for establishing exchange rate stability between the Euro-zone and the new members. We examine the prospects for such a convergence of monetary policies by investigating the extent to which the candidate countries have been able to achieve some measure of convergence between the evolution of their money stock with that of Germany, which we use as a historical proxy for the future monetary policy stance of the European Central Bank (ECB). We also compare the convergence achieved by the five most advanced transition-economy candidate countries to that achieved by countries that have recently become members of the EU, by several non-transition candidate countries and by some transition economies whose candidacy for EU membership has been deferred because they are making slower progress toward stabilizing their economies and introducing market mechanisms and institutions. In the next section of the paper we motivate the inquiry and describe the exchange rate regime that is likely to govern the relations between the new members of the EU and the current members. We expect this exchange rate regime to display a tighter relationship between the national currencies of the new members and the Euro than is allowed under the conditions of ERM II. Based on this characterization, we argue that, if the candidate countries were successful in having Germany “dominate” their monetary policy in recent years in the way that Germany was alleged to dominate the policies of other EU countries under the EMS, then the transition economies should have the potential to conform to the monetary policies of the ECB. The statistical tests of this domination of candidate-country monetary policy by Germany are developed and presented in Section 3, and the implications of these findings and the inter-country comparisons drawn from them are set out in Section 4.

The motivation for our inquiry was the observation that membership in the EU for both transition and market-economy countries will yield mutual benefits only if a stable exchange rate regime between new members and the Euro-zone countries can be worked out that will be acceptable to both sides. A necessary, if not sufficient, condition for the long-term viability of such a regime is that the new members be able to follow the lead of the ECB in setting their monetary policy. Our results show that such domination of national monetary policy by the Bundesbank, which we see as a proxy for the ECB, quite clearly characterizes the behavior of the most recent members of the EU, Austria, Finland and Sweden. We also find a strong connection between the Bundesbank’s policies and those of Cyprus and Malta, two of the market-economy candidates for EU membership. Among the transition economies, the ability to follow the policies of the Bundesbank is weaker or, for some countries, not in all cases those that are the most backward in their stabilization and transformation efforts, non-existent. Hungary and Poland, two leading candidates for EU membership that did not follow Bundesbank policies in the 1990s, may have gained an advantage. By following an independent monetary policy that was more attuned to the needs of their economies, they may have achieved faster rates of economic growth and, perhaps, economic restructuring. However, our results suggest that this advantage came at the cost of uncertainty about the appropriate rate of exchange to set against the Euro as these countries join the EU. Even if these countries have exchange rates that are near equilibrium, these rates reflect past monetary policy, and they may continue to do so even if these two countries switch to being dominated by ECB policies in the few years remaining before accession. However, once they join the EU and begin to adopt ECB policy in preparation for joining the Euro-zone, their monetary policy will be different from what it was in the 1990s, and this different monetary policy will imply a different equilibrium exchange rate. Thus the challenge and the risk for the monetary authorities in these countries is to be able to select an exchange rate, or to have the market select an exchange rate, against the Euro that will reflect their future monetary policies rather than their past ones. Countries such as the Czech Republic and Estonia that followed German monetary policy in the 1990s may have given up a measure of monetary independence and suffered corresponding losses in terms of growth and the pace of restructuring. However, to the extent that their current exchange rates can be seen as being close to equilibrium, they can feel confident that their current exchange rate against the Euro is a relatively reliable indicator of what a sustainable parity against the Euro can be once they join the EU. While our results do not enable us to weigh the relative costs and benefits of these two approaches to monetary policy, we do note that policy makers in the countries that have joined the EU most recently as well as those in the market-economy candidate countries have opted for greater certainty about the exchange rate over monetary independence.