Since the mid-1990s new developments in the theory of optimum currency areashave set forth an equilibrium approach that, in contrast with the traditional viewstemming from Robert Mundell's seminal paper, considers the optimality criteria as the product of equilibrium forces and therefore...

This paper contrasts the received view of optimum currency areas with the modernequilibrium approach. Setting Mundell's work against earlier analyses of monetary unions exposes the peculiarities of his theory, embedded in the static Keynesian paradigm. Mundell's hypothesis, constructed on the...