Towards North American Monetary Union

"Eric Helleiner provides a detailed exploration of the politics underlying Canada's recent debate over the merits of monetary union with the United States. Comparing the US Federal Reserve and the European Monetary Union, he argues that Canada would exercise far less influence within a North American monetary union than individual countries do within the European community. He also analyses the seemingly paradoxical support of Quebec sovereignists for free trade and monetary union." --Résumé de l'éditeur.

Britain is confronted with the EU and its Economic and Monetary Union or the 'eurozone' an area of 12 EU Member States in which the Euro is the single currency. At a time in which the discussion revolves around the future of national currencies, this work looks at the question of monetary integration for the cases of Britain and Canada.

This paper considers the extent to which the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) meets the criteria for a common currency area. NAFTA is compared with the EC, a regional grouping for which initial plans for a monetary union are already in place. Most of the anticipated benefits from a monetary union in the EC apply with equal force to NAFTA. However, because the underlying disturbances are more diverse across members of NAFTA, the costs of abandoning the exchange rate instrument are likely to be higher. This is particularly true when NAFTA is compared to the EC’s continental core.

This book brings together an impressive and diverse group of authors to discuss its central theme: whether or not the dollarized international monetary system is sustainable in the context of the global economy it helped create. In addition to its uniquely well-rounded and comprehensive coverage of the issues, this lively and highly readable volume provides an accurate assessment of the lack of consensus in the current debate. A must read for anyone interested in currency crises and the increasing vulnerability of the dollar. Jane D Arista, Director of Progams, Financial Markets Center, US This book deals with the economic consequences of monetary integration, which has long been dominated by the Optimal Currency Area (OCA) paradigm. In this model, money is perceived as having developed from a private sector cost minimization process to facilitate transactions. Not surprisingly, the book argues, the main advantage of monetary integration in the OCA context is the reduction of transaction costs, yet the validity of OCA to analyze processes of monetary integration seems to be limited at best. The contributors in this volume try to go beyond the OCA model and understand the political economy of monetary integration by comparing the European Monetary Union with the dollarization (formal and informal) process in Latin America. The contributors, many of whom are leading lights, reflect the disagreements and the changing views on the proper monetary arrangements in a globalized world and suggest that monetary integration and dollarization are not the solution for the great majority of countries around the world. Monetary Integration and Dollarization brings together mainstream and heterodox views of monetary integration and uses the European and North American experiences as a guide for the discussion of dollarization in developing countries. It will appeal to scholars, researchers and policy makers in the fields of financial and international economics.

This book explores the new economics of monetary union. It carefully discusses the effects of shocks and policies on output and prices. Shocks and policies are country-specific or common. They occur on the demand or supply side. Countries can differ in behavioural functions. Wages can be fixed, flexible, or slow. In addition, fixed wages and flexible wages can coexist. Take for instance fixed wages in Germany and flexible wages in France. Or take fixed wages in Europe and flexible wages in America. A special feature of this book is the numerical estimation of shock and policy multipliers. Further topics are inflation and disinflation. Take for instance inflation in Germany and price stability in France. Then what policy is needed for disinflation in the union? And what will be the dynamic effects on Germany and France?