What Have We Learned from the Changeover to the Euro?: Lessons for Accession Countries from Catalonian Firms

The objective of this paper is to identify the factors with the greatest influence on the changeover process and to quantify how company policy and traits have informed currency adoption. Special attention is given to the role of the public sector in facilitating the currency changeover process. With this aim, we estimate different logit models using micro data from three data surveys, from 1999, 2000, and 2001, taken from a representative sample of eurozone firms located in Catalonia, Spain. The findings of the paper clearly underline the role of the public sector in the success of the changeover process and provide policy advice for countries in the process of acceding to the European Union and, subsequently, to the eurozone.