Trade and the Number of OCAs in the World

Abstract

This paper employs worldwide data on output and bilateral trade in order to identify optimum currency areas (OCAs) on a global basis. By retaining only two of the many criteria in the literature on OCAs, computer programming could serve to do the identification. The two chosen criteria relate to trade and the symmetry of shocks to output. Based on the first criterion, trade, some large continental OCAs emerge. Adding the second, symmetry, whittles down the size of these OCAs considerably. Nevertheless, some significant examples remain in the Americas, Europe and Asia, of which the European and the Asiatic are the most noteworthy. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998