A crisis that is currently stiffing the Euro Zone does equally suspend and shadows the debate on the European integration, that actually remains a different issue and, why not, still useful. This integration needs some more corrections: the old model revising, updating or readapting to a new...

This paper compares the euro area and the US in order to draw lessons for improving the Economic and Monetary Union. Although it is not perfect, the US comes closer to fulfilling the criteria of the Optimum Currency Area theory, and it did not experience the debt crisis that hit the euro area,...

Intra-trade among ASEAN countries have remained around 20% over the period 1993 until 2001 (ASEAN Secretariat). With this significant amount of trade being conducted between members of ASEAN countries, businesses were faced with exchange rate exposure due to the volatility of the exchange rate...

This paper examines the macroeconomic costs and benefits of dollarization. Economic theory suggests that the main benefit is enhanced price stability, while the main cost is higher business-cycle volatility if the dollarizing country’s output is not sufficiently correlated with that of the...

In 1961, in the earlier stage of the European integration, Bela Balassa proposed a five successive phase model about it as a foresight. Today, the half century experience on integration and corresponding literature issued just lets us see rather two big phases (instead of five). The one would be...

The article has two objectives. On one hand, it intends to show how inconsistent the proposal of creating a currency union among the countries of MERCOSUR is, as the final step of an integration process in this region. On the other hand, it argues that only a (Post) Keynesian alternative...

In this paper we contrast regional and national data on real exchange rate movements, the growth rates of output and employment, labour mobility and unemployment. We find that asymmetric shocks tend to be more prevalent at the regional than at the national level in Europe. The presumption of the...

We review the literature on business-cycle correlation between the euro area and Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), a topic that has gained attention in recent years as new EU entrants prepare for participation in the monetary union. Our meta-analysis suggests several CEECs already...

I revisit the potential costs and benefits for Sweden of joining the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) of the European Union. I first show that the Swedish business cycle since the mid-1990s has been closely correlated with the Euro area economies, suggesting that common shocks have been an...