The impact of the European economic and monetary union on the stability of the Greek economy

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of how the stability of the Greek economy will be affected by Greece’s accession to the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The theoretical basis for most of the discussion of this issue to date is found in the theory of optimum currency areas (OCA), which identifies the nature of economic disturbances as key to whether currency unions provide a net benefit. We use vector autoregression to identify the nature of the disturbances that the Greek economy has experienced in the past, and add such disturbances to stochastic simulations of a structural macroeconomic model of the Greek economy, part of a larger model of the European economy known as QUEST II. The main conclusion is that the EMU will make output slightly more stable in the Greek economy. Therefore, the Greek economy will reap the efficiency gains of the common currency without suffering significantly from the elimination of its monetary sovereignty.