Figure: The logic of the Optimum Area Theory

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Benefits of a Currency Area

• Elimination of transaction costs and comparability of .

• Elimination of exchange rate risk (for transactions and FDI).

• More independent central bank.

• Benefits of an international currency.

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Costs of a Currency Area

• Costs arise because, when joining monetary union, a country loses monetary policy instrument (e.g. exchange rate) • This is costly when asymmetric shocks occur

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Costs of a Currency Area

• The loss of monetary independence fundamentally changes the capacity of governments to finance their budget deficits. • Members of monetary union issue debt in currency over which they have no control. • Liquidity crisis  Solvency Crisis. • Stand-alone countries can always create liquidity. (inflation might be a problem but cannot be forced to default against their will!) • This makes a monetary union fragile.

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Costs of a Currency Area

• Diversity in a currency area is costly because a common currency makes it impossible to react to each and every local particularity.

• The theory of optimum currency areas (OCA) aims at identifying these costs more precisely.

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Shocks and the Exchange Rate

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Asymmetric Shocks

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Other sources of asymmetry

• Different labour institutions – Centralized versus non-centralized wage bargaining – Symmetric shocks (e.g. oil shocks) are transmitted differently when institutions differ across countries • Different legal systems – These lead to different transmission of symmetric shocks (e.g. interest rate change) – Anglo-Saxon versus continental European financial markets

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Asymmetric Shocks: Case Study EMU

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Asymmetric Shocks: Case Study EMU

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Asymmetric Shocks: Case Study EMU

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Asymmetric Shocks: Case Study EMU

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The Optimum Currency Area Criteria

The optimum currency area (OCA) theory derive practical criteria to understand which countries should share the same currency.

Three classic (economic) criteria: - Labor Mobility (Mundell): - Production Diversification (Kenen); - Openness (McKinnon).

Three political criteria: - fiscal transfers; - homogeneous preferences; - solidarity vs. nationalism.

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The Optimum Currency Area Criteria: 1. Labor Mobility (Mundell)

SuSe 2013 Monetary Policy and EMU: Optimum Currency Area 14 The Optimum Currency Area Criteria: 2. Production Diversification (Kenen)

• Countries whose production and exports are widely diversified and of similar structure form an optimum currency area: - indeed, in that case, there are few asymmetric shocks and each of them is likely to be of small concern.

SuSe 2013 Monetary Policy and EMU: Optimum Currency Area 15 The Optimum Currency Area Criteria: 3. Openness (McKinnon)

• Countries that are very open to trade and trade heavily with each other form an optimum currency area: - traded good prices are set worldwide; - if all goods are traded, domestic good prices must be flexible and the exchange rate does not matter for competitiveness.

• Caveat: - exchange rate can affect profits for exporters (but nowadays most goods have little national specificity).

SuSe 2013 Monetary Policy and EMU: Optimum Currency Area 16 The Optimum Currency Area Criteria: 4. Fiscal Transfers

• Countries that agree to compensate each other for adverse shocks form an optimum currency area: - transfers can act as an insurance that mitigates the costs of an asymmetric shocks; - transfers exist within national borders; - the debt crisis has brought forward the issue of transfers (i.e., moral hazard).

SuSe 2013 Monetary Policy and EMU: Optimum Currency Area 17 The Optimum Currency Area Criteria: 5. Homogeneous Preferences

• member countries must share a wide consensus on the way to deal with shocks.

Germany and Italy:

SuSe 2013 Monetary Policy and EMU: Optimum Currency Area 18 The Optimum Currency Area Criteria: 6. Solidarity vs. Nationalism

• When the common monetary policy gives rise to conflicts of national interests, the countries that form a currency area need to accept the costs in the name of a common destiny: - people must have a shared sense of common destiny that outweighs the nationalist tendencies.

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An indicator of mobility:

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Trade dissimilarity index:

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Openness to trade:

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Correlation of demand and supply shocks with area 0,8

0,6 ITA

0,4

POL FRA HUN ESP 0,2 GER IRL DK EST ROM AUT PRT S FIN NLD 0 GR BEL demandshocks SVK CZE UK -0,2 SVN

-0,4 LTU LVA -0,6 -0,2 0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 supply shocks

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Fiscal transfers: - up until the debt crisis, there was no transfer system in the EU; - EU budget is small (slightly above 1% of GDP) and almost entirely spent on operating expenses, CAP, and Structural Funds; - crisis led to the creation of the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF), which recognizes that monetary union needs transfers.

Homogeneous preferences: - based on past inflation rates, it does not seem that country share similar views on monetary policy; - similar story when looking at public debts.

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Feeling European? (2006)

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So, is Europe an optimum currency area? Mixed performance:

 The single currency project has been and remains controversial.  The partial fulfillment of the OCA criteria implies that, given that the decision to go ahead has been taken, there will be costs. SuSe 2013 Monetary Policy and EMU: Optimum Currency Area 27 Will Europe become an Optimum Currency Area?

• The fact that the single currency exists can change the situation: - effects on trade: Baldwin et al. (2008) conclude that, so far, the euro has probably increased trade by some 5%; - effects on labour markets: few expect labour mobility to increase dramatically in the near future but the single market may encourage reforms to make European labour markets more flexible; - fiscal transfers: much the same applies to fiscal transfers. • BUT monetary union is not only about ! • Political considerations have been paramount in launching the euro: political leaders agreed on the monetary union without thinking in terms of the OCA theory. Their intention was to move one step further in the direction of an ‘ever-closer union’. SuSe 2013 Monetary Policy and EMU: Optimum Currency Area 28