Optimum currency area. Is a fixed exchange rate regime more suitable than a flexible one?

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Economics - Macro-economics, general, , language: English, abstract: This term paper outlines the theory of Optimum Currency Area (OCA), also known as an Optimal Currency Region (OCR). It also deals with the question under which conditions it is more suitable to have a fixed exchange rate regime or a flexible exchange rates regime in an OCA.

The theory of OCA was developed in the early 1960s and deals with mixed, complicated issues of international macroeconomics and "emerged from the debate on the advantages and disadvantages of fixed versus flexible exchange rate regimes". Moreover the theory "attempts to answer the question under which circumstances it is beneficiary for a country or region to constitute a common currency area with other countries or region". This question was analyzed and contributed by the pioneered work of Mundell (1961). Other contributors at the beginning of this theory were McKinnon (1962) and Kenen (1969). Their cognition were based on founding¿s by Friedman (1953) and Meade (1957).