Economic conditions, investment and employment in Europe

Abstract

From 1999 the integrated currency ‘Euro’ has been introduced, however the doubt about introducing it has been discussed broadly. This paper presents an analysis on the European busines s cycle on the basis of the theory of optimum currency area, and analyses the problem of whether the movements of busines s cycle has shown convergence or not. The result is that the convergence has been ongoing recently. And this paper also considers of the reason of investment or employment that may be the big reason of promoting monetary integration. Some countries have realized increase of employment by exports and other countries have done it by domestic investment through appreciation of their own currencies. And on the whole, the process of increasing monetary integration in Europe, in other words, EMS (ERM) period, seems to have had a negative impact on employment.