Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/123606 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
AGDI Working Paper No. WP/13/030
Publisher: 
African Governance and Development Institute (AGDI), Yaoundé
Abstract: 
With the spectre of the Euro crisis hunting embryonic monetary unions, we use a dynamic model of a small open economy to analyze REERs imbalances and examine whether the movements in the aggregate real exchange rates are consistent with the underlying macroeconomic fundamentals in the proposed West African Monetary Union (WAMU). Using both country-oriented and WAMU panel-based specifications, we show that the long-run behavior of the REERs can be explained by fluctuations in the terms of trade, productivity, investment, debt and openness. While there is still significant evidence of cross-country differences in the relationship between underlying macroeconomic fundamentals and corresponding REERs, the embryonic WAMU has a stable error correction mechanism with four of the five cointegration relations having signs that are consistent with the predictions from economic theory. Policy implications are discussed and the conclusions of the analysis are a valuable contribution to the scholarly and policy debate over whether the creation of a sustainable monetary union should precede convergence in macroeconomic fundamentals that determine REER adjustments.
Subjects: 
Exchange rate
Macroeconomic impact
Proposed WAMU
JEL: 
F31
F33
F42
F61
O55
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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