IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/87955.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Lessons from historical monetary unions - is the European monetary union making the same mistakes?

Author

Listed:
  • Ryan, John
  • Loughlin, John

Abstract

This article examines three historical monetary unions: the Latin Monetary Union (LMU), the Scandinavian Monetary Union (SMU), and the Austro-Hungarian Monetary Union (AHMU) in an attempt to derive possible lessons for the European Monetary Union (EMU). The term ‘monetary union’ can be defined either narrowly or broadly depending on how closely it conforms to Mundell’s notion of ‘Optimal Currency Area’. After examining each of the historical monetary unions from this perspective, the article concludes that none of them ever truly conformed to Mundell’s concept, nor does the EMU. Nevertheless, the article argues that some lessons may be learned from these historical experiences. First, it is necessary that there exist robust institutions such as a common central bank and a unified fiscal policy in order to withstand external shocks. The three early unions could not withstand the shock of WWI. Another important lesson is that continuing national rivalries can undermine any monetary union.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryan, John & Loughlin, John, 2018. "Lessons from historical monetary unions - is the European monetary union making the same mistakes?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 87955, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:87955
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/87955/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Amélie Barbier-Gauchard & Meixing Dai & Claire Mainguy & Jamel Saadaoui & Moïse Sidiropoulos & Isabelle Terraz & Jamel Trabelsi, 2021. "Towards a more resilient European Union after the COVID-19 crisis," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 11(2), pages 321-348, June.
    2. Amélie Barbier-Gauchard & Meixing Dai & Claire Mainguy & Jamel Saadaoui & Moïse Sidiropoulos & Isabelle Terraz & Jamel Trabelsi, 2020. "Towards a more resilient European Union after the COVID-19 crisis," Working Papers hal-03008144, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Latin monetary union; Scandinavian monetary union; Austro-Hungarian monetary union; European monetary union; Eurozone crisis; European Central Bank;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • F02 - International Economics - - General - - - International Economic Order and Integration
    • F50 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:87955. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.