Asymmetric Shocks and Risk Sharing in a Monetary Union: Updated Evidence and Policy Implications for Europe

41 Pages Posted: 5 Aug 2004

See all articles by Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan

Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan

University of Maryland - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Koc University, Graduate School of Business

Bent E. Sørensen

University of Houston - Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Oved Yosha

Tel Aviv University - The Eitan Berglas School of Economics (Deceased)

Date Written: June 2004

Abstract

We find that risk sharing in the European Union (EU) has been increasing over the past decade due to increased cross-ownership of assets across countries. Industrial specialization has also been increasing over the last decade, and we conjecture that risk sharing plays an important causal effect by allowing countries to specialize without being subject to higher income risk even though the variability of output may increase. We believe that lower trade barriers may not have played a dominant causal role during this decade, because the effect of lower trade barriers has probably already played itself out. We further find that the asymmetry of GDP fluctuations in the EU has declined steeply over the last two decades. This may be due to economic policies becoming more similar as countries were adjusting fiscal policy in order to meet the Maastricht criteria; however, a similar result was found for U.S. states so the finding may be due to a different nature of the shocks to the world economy in the 1990s. We expect to see a further rise in risk sharing between EU countries, accompanied by more specialization. The resulting increase in GDP asymmetry should be minor, however, and will have small welfare costs, because increased risk sharing should lower income (GNP) asymmetry.

Keywords: Financial integration, regional specialization, international portfolio diversification, income insurance

JEL Classification: F15, F20, F36, F43

Suggested Citation

Kalemli-Ozcan, Sebnem and Sorensen, Bent E. and Yosha, Oved, Asymmetric Shocks and Risk Sharing in a Monetary Union: Updated Evidence and Policy Implications for Europe (June 2004). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=572842

Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan (Contact Author)

University of Maryland - Department of Economics ( email )

College Park, MD 20742
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
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Koc University, Graduate School of Business ( email )

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Turkey

Bent E. Sorensen

University of Houston - Department of Economics ( email )

204 McElhinney Hall
Houston, TX 77204-5882
United States
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713-743-3798 (Fax)

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

Oved Yosha

Tel Aviv University - The Eitan Berglas School of Economics (Deceased)

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