Fiscal unions redux

Before the advent of sophisticated international Önancial markets, a widely accepted belief was that within a monetary union, a union-wide authority orchestrating Öscal transfers between countries is necessary to provide adequate insurance against country-speciÖc economic áuctuations. A natural question is then: Do sophisticated international Önancial markets obviate the need for such an active union-wide authority? We argue that they do. SpeciÖcally, we show that in a benchmark economy with no international Önancial markets, an activist union-wide authority is necessary to achieve desirable outcomes. With sophisticated Önancial markets, however, such an authority is unnecessary if its only goal is to provide cross-country insurance. Since restricting the set of policy instruments available to member countries does not create a Öscal externality across them, this result holds in a wide variety of settings. Finally, we establish that an activist union-wide authority concerned just with providing insurance across member countries is optimal only when individual countries are either unable or unwilling to pursue desirable policies.