In this speech, the Governor notes that monetary union is fundamentally a political rather than an economic issue, and that the politics of monetary union is for elected politicians. But it is also an economic issue: he goes on to survey the pros and cons of the single currency in the context of...

The first objective of this paper is to present theoretical approaches to the impact of trade growth (induced by monetary integration) on business cycle synchronization which is an important factor of a country's readiness for a currency union accession. The main conclusion from the first part...

The measures implemented to reduce current account deficits within several euro area econ-omies are aimed at boosting competitiveness to raise exports. Due to low industrial capacities in Greece, Portugal and Spain, for instance, it is questionable, however, whether exports can contribute much...