Prospects for a monetary union in the East Africa community: Some empirical evidence

This paper examines generalised purchasing power parity (G-PPP) and business cycle synchronisation in the East Africa Community with the aim of assessing the prospects for a monetary union. The univariate fractional integration analysis shows that the individual series exhibit unit roots and are hig...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Caporale, G.M. (Guglielmo M.)|||/items/9eec80b9-3717-46f0-a5da-1d38cae16ad1, Gil-Alana, L.A. (Luis A.)|||/items/a283ece6-b578-452c-9362-8d1a6255b23c
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Navarra
Repositorio:Dadun. Depósito Académico Digital de la Universidad de Navarra
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:dadun.unav.edu:10171/67764
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10171/67764
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:East Africa community
Monetary union
Optimal currency area
Fractional integration and cointegration
Business cycle synchronisation
Hodrick–prescott filter
Descripción
Sumario:This paper examines generalised purchasing power parity (G-PPP) and business cycle synchronisation in the East Africa Community with the aim of assessing the prospects for a monetary union. The univariate fractional integration analysis shows that the individual series exhibit unit roots and are highly persistent. The fractional bivariate cointegration tests suggest that there exist bivariate fractional cointegrating relationships between the exchange rate of the Tanzanian shilling and those of the other EAC countries, and also between the exchange rates of the Rwandan franc, the Burundian franc and the Ugandan shilling. The Fractionally Cointegrated Vector AutoRegressive (FCVAR) results imply the existence of a single cointegrating relationship between the exchange rates of the EAC countries. On the whole, there is evidence in favour of G-PPP. In addition, there appears to be a high degree of business cycle synchronisation between these economies. On both grounds, one can argue that a monetary union should be feasible.