CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | VanBuskirk, Victoria Anne |
|---|---|
| Title | Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite: External Imbalances, Membership Costs and the Case of the West African Economic and Monetary Union |
| Summary | In light of heavily debated concerns of the structure of monetary unions and the prevalence of external imbalances, an intriguing question emerges of the case of West and Central African countries in the CFA Franc zone. The sixty-year-old monetary union left to former French colonized countries in West and Central Africa, entitled Communauté Financière d'Afrique (CFA) is comprised of 14 members. This monetary and economic union, which benefits members due to its ability to sustain the most stable inflation rate across the region, has come across a substantial amount of criticism both politically and economically, due to its continued French ties and rigid nature limiting members fiscal and monetary policy adjustments. This paper utilizes quantitative and qualitative methods in order to examine and discuss external imbalances found in the CFA Franc zone and subsequent membership costs that states maintain in the Union. This thesis aims to provide both a macroeconomic analysis and public policy discussion on members’ efforts to reach a level of convergence in order to extract the greatest benefits from the agreement. This triangulation approach of a multilevel convergence of data is taken from Creswell (2013) and a macroeconomic framework by Richard Wood (2014) is used to understand external imbalances. Through the course of this research, it is firmly established that members in the WAEMU are not well aligned and although there are periods of convergence, these are short lived. Members in these emerging economies face vast uncertainties and challenges which pose a threat to sound policy, not to mention the pervasive issue of bureaucratic corruption plaguing this region. A greater realization of the necessity for members to seek greater unification in both their domestic policy and economies to decide the future of the Union emerges from this research. Resulting in members needing to choose to either relent sovereignty in fiscal decision making, or to consider a different, less unified path. |
| Supervisor | Horvath, Julius |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/vanbuskirk_victoria.pdf |
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