期刊名称：Euro Area Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Statistics
印刷版ISSN：1830-3420
电子版ISSN：1830-3439
出版年度：1999
出版社：European Central Bank
摘要：Skeptic views on EMU are usually cast around three arguments. First, the single European currency will be harmful unless the EU satisfies “Optimum Currency Area” (OCA) conditions, and this is not likely to be the case except for a small number of “core” countries. Second, heterogeneous economic and financial structures will create undesired differences in the local impact of the single monetary policy. Third, the shift from domestic to area-wide considerations may give rise to conflicts in the decision making process of the European Central Bank (ECB). We present some evidence relevant for the first and third of these issues. We show that, first, cross-country correlation of real cycles and inflation have risen significantly in recent years among EMU participants, which implies a tendency towards a fulfillment of (at least part of) the OCA conditions. Second, we provide evidence that the monetary policy rules followed by the main EMU participating central banks have converged though significant differences still exist. Convergence in economic performance and broadly common central bank rules imply that the transition to the third stage of EMU is a step in an ongoing process, not a one-time regime change.
