Oil shocks and the euro as an optimum currency area

Abstract

We use wavelet analysis to study the impact of the Euro adoption on the oil price macroeconomy relation in the Euroland. We uncover evidence that the oil-macroeconomy relation changed in the past decades. We show that after the Euro adoption some countries became more similar with respect to how their macroeconomies react to oil shocks. However, we also conclude that the adoption of the common currency did not contribute to a higher degree of synchronization between Portugal, Ireland and Belgium and the rest of the countries in the Euroland. On the contrary, in these countries the macroeconomic reaction to an oil shock became more asymmetric after adopting the Euro.