期刊名称：Euro Area Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Statistics
印刷版ISSN：1830-3420
电子版ISSN：1830-3439
出版年度：2014
出版社：European Central Bank
摘要：The Euro Plus Pact was approved by 23 EU countries in March 2011 and came intoforce shortly afterwards. The Pact stipulates a range of quantitative targets meant tostrengthen cost competitiveness with the aim of preventing the accumulation of externalfinancial imbalances. This paper uses Granger causality tests and vector autoregressivemodels to assess the short-term linkages between changes in the relative unit labour cost andchanges in the current account balance. The sample consists of annual data for 27 EUcountries for the period 1995-2012. The main finding is that changes in the current accountbalance precedes changes in relative unit labour costs, while there is no discernable effect inthe opposite direction. The divergence in unit labour costs between the countries in NorthernEurope and the countries in Southern and Eastern Europe may thus partly be the result ofcapital flows from the core of Europe to the periphery prior to the global financial crisis. Theresults also suggest that the measures in the Euro Plus Pact to restrain the growth of unitlabour costs may not affect the current account balance in the short term
关键词：European integration; policy coordination; unit labour costs; current account imbalances;economic crisis
