Is Europe And Optimum Currency Area

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 1,7, University of applied sciences, Cologne, course: Economics, language: English, abstract: On the 1st of January 1999, 11 European countries adopted the Euro as their official currency. A new Economic and Monetary Union with more than 300 million citizens was born. Sharing a common currency offers several advantages for countries, firms and citizens like enhanced cross-border trade, a better price transparency or the disappearance of foreign exchange rate risks. However, a Monetary Union also comes with constraints like the loss of exchange rate regime of its members which is an important instrument to fight adverse shocks. In order to minimize economic risks for its members and to foster the economic stability of the future European EMU, the European Union member states agreed to meet the Euro Convergence Criteria as a requirement to adopt the Euro. During the negotiations about the necessary criterion, the theory of Optimal Currency Areas – a theory which has its origin in the Bretton Woods era – was deliberately reincarnated by economists to verify whether or not the Eurozone can become a successful EMU. Until today the (traditional) OCA theory is often used by the literature and also by politicians to evince fundamental flaws of the Eurozone. This assignment investigates the Eurozone in the light of the theory of Optimal Currency Areas. In the first part of this assignment the main contributors to the theory of Optimal Currency Areas are enumerated and its most significant factors are explained. The second part applies the listed factors to the Eurozone in order to determine whether or not a specific criterion is fulfilled by the European EMU. A summary and conclusion complete this essay.

An optimum currency area is an economic unit composed of regions affected symmetrically by disturbances and between which labor and other factors of production flow freely. The symmetrical nature of disturbances and the high degree of factor mobility make it optimal to forsake nominal exchange rate changes as an instrument of adjustment and to reap the reduction in transactions costs associated with a common currency. This paper assesses labor mobility and the incidence of shocks in Europe by comparing them with comparable measures for Canada and the United States. Real exchange rates, a standard measure of the extent of assymetrical disturbances, remain considerably more variable in Europe than within the united states. Real securities prices, a measure of the incentive to reallocate productive capital across regions, appear considerably more variable between Paris and Dusseldorf than between Toronto and Montreal. A variety of measures suggests that labor mobility and the speed of labor market adjustment remain lower in Europe than in the United states. Thus, Europe remains further than the currency unions of North America from the ideal of an optimum currency area.

Robert Mundell's pioneering theory of optimum currency areas is revisited, with experts from the IMF, the BIS, the European Investment Bank, academia, European think tanks, and the Bank of Israel looking at its current practical applications, especially in the context of the forthcoming European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Robert Mundell himself offers an update to help in assessing the implications and consequences of EMU.

A model of optimum currency areas is presented using a general equilibrium model with regionally differentiated goods. The choice of a currency union depends upon the size of the underlying disturbances, the correlation between these disturbances, the costs of transactions across currencies, factor mobility across regions, and the interrelationships between demand for different goods. It is found that, while a currency union can raise the welfare of the regions within the union, it unambiguously lowers welfare for those outside the union.

This paper investigates the circumstances under which it is beneficial to participate in a currency area. A two-country monetary model of trade with nominal rigidities encompasses the real and monetary arguments suggested by the optimum currency area literature: correlation of real shocks, international factor mobility, fiscal adjustment, openness, difference in national inflationary biases, correlation of monetary shocks, and benefits of a single currency. The effect of openness on the net benefits is ambiguous, contrary to the usual argument that more open economies are better candidates for a currency area. Countries do not necessarily agree on whether a given currency union should be created.

Gathering together the papers presented at the Madrid Conference on Optimum Currency Areas in 1970 this volume represents one of the first complete surveys of the theory and policy implication of monetary integration. The book discusses: the economics of fixed exchange rates relevant to monetary relations within an integrated monetary area the evolution of economic doctrine and a survey of optimum currency area theory problems of policy co-ordination within a currency area relevance of the monetary-fiscal policy mix problems of monetary union in developing countries the book predicted the establishment of an European currency but presented the case for greater flexibility of exchange rates as an alternative to currency unification.