TY  - JOUR
AU  - Alesina,Alberto
AU  - Barro,Robert J.
AU  - Tenreyro,Silvana
TI  - Optimal Currency Areas
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9072
PY  - 2002
Y2  - July 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9072
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9072.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alberto F. Alesina
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center 210
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-8388
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: aalesina@harvard.edu

Robert J. Barro
Department of Economics
Littauer Center 218
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-3203
Fax: 617/496-8629
E-Mail: rbarro@harvard.edu

Silvana Tenreyro
London School of Economics
Department of Economics
Houghton St, St. Clement's Building, S.600
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom
Tel: 44-2079556018
E-Mail: S.Tenreyro@lse.ac.uk
M1  - published as Alberto Alesina, Robert J. Barro, Silvana Tenreyro. "Optimal Currency Areas," in Mark Gertler and Kenneth Rogoff, editors, "NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2002, Volume 17" MIT Press (2003)

AB  - As the number of independent countries increases and their economies become more integrated, we would expect to observe more multi-country currency unions. This paper explores the pros and cons for different countries to adopt as an anchor the dollar, the euro, or the yen. Although there appear to be reasonably well-defined euro and dollar areas, there does not seem to be a yen area. We also address the question of how trade and co-movements of outputs and prices would respond to the formation of a currency union. This response is important because the decision of a country to join a union would depend on how the union affects trade and co-movements.
ER  -