National Bureau of Economic Research
NBER: Eurozone Entry of New EU Member States from Central Europe: Should they? Could they?

Subject: Eurozone Entry of New EU Member States from Central Europe: Should they? Could they?
From: Willem H. Buiter (willembuiter@btinternet.com)
Date: Tue Apr 18 2006 - 16:14:26 EDT

Colleagues,

 

Anne Sibert and I have just completed a short paper on the Eurozone entry of
new EU members from Central and Eastern Europe. We argue that the not
fiscally challenged nations of CEE (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia
and, possibly, Slovakia) are ready (on Optimal Currency Area grounds) to
join the Eurozone immediately. We also show how the rigid application of
admission tests (the Maastricht criteria, and especially the inflation
criterion) is likely to rule out the accession of all but Slovenia.
Finally, we argue for a more intelligent interpretation of the inflation
criterion. The paper can be downloaded from:

http://www.nber.org/~wbuiter/eurozone.pdf

 

A shorter version will be published later this year in the UNDP-LSE
Newsletter Development and Transition, at:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/developmentAndTransition/

 

Regards,

 

Willem Buiter

 

 

 

Willem H. Buiter CBE, FBA

Professor of European Political Economy,

London School of Economics and Political Science

 

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