The Breakup of the Euro Area

Abstract

The possibility of the breakup of the euro area was already being mooted, even before the single currency existed. It is unlikely that one or more members of the euro area will leave in the next ten years and the total disintegration of the euro area is more unlikely still. While it is widely argued that the technical and legal obstacles to a country unilaterally reintroducing its national currency are surmountable, it is argued here that the associated difficulties could be quite serious. There are multiple historical examples of members of monetary unions introducing a national currency. The chapter also suggests that the legal problems associated with the redenomination of contracts can be overcome. The economic obstacles revolve around the question of how debt servicing costs, interest rate spreads, and interest rate-sensitive forms of economic activity would respond to a country's departure from the euro area. A widespread presumption is that departure from the euro area would be associated with a significant rise in spreads and debt-servicing costs.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 175 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.