IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/389.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monetary cooperation in the CFA zone

Author

Listed:
  • Honohan, Patrick

Abstract

The CFA or franc zone in Africa is the largest and most enduring of currency blocs. This paper is designed as a guide to understanding how the zone works as a mechanism for monetary cooperation. Unfortunately, the experience described in this paper is not encouraging. Despite fixed exchange rates and an elaborate set of rules for avoiding excessive credit expansion, the CFA zone has almost foundered in widespread bank insolvency. The paper is organized as follows : a) section 2 describes member countries of the zone, highlighting their diversity not only in economic structure but in the state of their financial system; b) section 3 shows that there is no effective regional money market and considers how this might be remedied; c) section 4 discusses how credit has been distributed between the member countries and highlights asymmetries which have arisen; d) section 5 explains how seignorage is divided in the unions and shows how the losses may fall disproportionately on non favored countries; and e) section 6 concludes by considering how the recent banking crisis has revealed deficiencies in the zone's arrangements.

Suggested Citation

  • Honohan, Patrick, 1990. "Monetary cooperation in the CFA zone," Policy Research Working Paper Series 389, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:389
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/1990/03/01/000009265_3960929010635/Rendered/PDF/multi_page.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rossum, M.T.A. & Tak, C.M., 1994. "The CFA franc zone : reason for participation," Serie Research Memoranda 0040, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    2. NANA DAVIES, Charles, 2018. "Sources of Macroeconomic Fluctuations in a Franc Zone Country: A Bayesian estimation," MPRA Paper 99998, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Kuikeu, Oscar, 2011. "Arguments contre la zone franc [Against the cfa franc zone]," MPRA Paper 33710, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Elbadawi, Ibrahim & Majd, Nader, 1996. "Adjustment and economic performance under a fixed exchange rate: A comparative analysis of the CFA zone," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 939-951, May.
    5. Masahiro Kawai & Shinji Takagi, 2005. "Towards regional monetary cooperation in East Asia: lessons from other parts of the world," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(2), pages 97-116.
    6. NANA DAVIES, Charles, 2020. "Land Collateral and Rule-of-Thumb Households in a Franc Zone Country: A Bayesian Appraisal," MPRA Paper 100000, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Elbadawi, Ibrahim & Majd, Nader, 1992. "Fixed parity of the exchange rate and economic performance in the CFA zone : a comparative study," Policy Research Working Paper Series 830, The World Bank.
    8. Chamley, Christophe & Honohan, Patrick, 1990. "Taxation of financial intermediation : measurement principles and application to five African countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 421, The World Bank.
    9. Rohinton Medhora, 1992. "Seigniorage flows in the West African Monetary Union, 1976–89," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 128(3), pages 513-526, September.
    10. Devarajan, Shantayanan & de Melo, Jaime, 1990. "Membership in the CFA zone : Odyssean journey or Trojan horse?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 482, The World Bank.
    11. Savvides, Andreas, 1998. "Inflation and monetary policy in selected West and Central African countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 809-827, May.
    12. Anja Shortland & David Stasavage, 2004. "Monetary Policy in the Franc Zone: Estimating Interest Rate Rules for the BCEAO," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-20, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Anja Shortland & David Stasavage, 2004. "Monetary Policy in the CFA Zone: Country-level Credit Policy," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-15, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    14. Chhibber, Ajay, 1991. "Africa's rising inflation : causes, consequences, and cures," Policy Research Working Paper Series 577, The World Bank.
    15. Medhora, Rohinton, 1995. "The allocation of seigniorage in the Franc Zone: The BEAC and BCEAO regions compared," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(10), pages 1781-1793, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:389. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.