Must-Read: David Beckworth: The Big Lesson of the Eurozone Crisis

David Beckworth: The Big Lesson of the Eurozone Crisis: “Paul Krugman notes that Eurozone crisis is a vindication of that optimum currency area (OCA) theory…

The crisis also sheds light on the specialization versus endogeneity debate…. The endogenous view of the OCA criteria fed right into what Lars Christensen calls the fatal conceit of Eurozone planners. It provided an ex-ante justification for believing all would work out well in this grand monetary experiment. The specialization view, on the other hand, was par for course with the tendency among American economists to be pessimistic about its success. We all know now which view was right…. At a minimum the periphery economies failed to further diversify after joining the Eurozone. So the great hope of Eurozone countries like Greece endogenously conforming to OCA criteria never happened. If anything, joining the Eurozone pushed Greece and the periphery further away from the OCA boundary. So probably the biggest lesson of the Eurozone crisis is to take the OCA criteria seriously before joining a currency union.