Mundell - The IMS and the Case for a World Currency - The...

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The International Monetary System and the Case for a World Currency
Robert A. Mundell
1999 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics,
Professor of Economics, Columbia University, New York, USA
Leon Ko mi ski Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management (WSPiZ) and TIGER
Distinguished Lectures Series n. 12
Warsaw, 23 October 2003
Grzegorz W. Kolodko, Director of TIGER : In the spring of 2000 Professor Robert Mundell
initiated the WSPiZ and TIGER Distinguished Lectures Series related to the issues of
globalization, liberalization, integration and transformation. Three and a half years ago he was
speaking on the “International Financial Architecture, The Euro Zone and Its Enlargement in
Eastern Europe”. At that time the euro was still at its very early stage of existence. Today it
hovers around the strongest level ever against the American dollar. The debate about the
conditions upon which the forthcoming new members of the European Union – including
Poland and other seven post-socialist countries of East Central Europe – will be joining the
eurozone is getting momentum. Professor Mundell since the beginning has been in favor of
the European Union enlargement, including the implications of this process for expansion of
the Eurozone. Now, just half a year before the integration of eight transitional economies (and
two Mediterranean countries) will take place, the monetary convergence is closer than at any
time before.
Leon Ko mi ski Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management (WSPiZ) and
Transformation, Integration and Globalization Economic Research (TIGER) Distinguished
Lectures Series has continued all the time since the first lecture delivered by Professor
Mundell in 2000
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and today the 12
th
lecture is presented again by the 1999 Nobel Prize
laureate in Economics and the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of TIGER –
Professor Robert Mundell.
Professor Mundell does not need to be introduced as he is our frequent guest here – both, at
the Academy and in TIGER – however, one must point out that he is considered worldwide,
and not without a reason, the father of the optimal currency zones theory. For this purpose his
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The lectures delivered in the Series are available on the TIGER website at www.tiger.edu.pl . They can be also
mailed upon request.

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contribution to the introduction of Euro is unquestionable and widely acclaimed. Hence – I
believe – today we will all be very interested in listening to his views on the topic “The
International Monetary System and the Case for a World Currency”. Is one world currency a
reliable option for the global economy, and might it be a better solution than the existing
international multicurrency system? Such option seems to be more and more attractive since
we experience many problems in managing currencies and exchange rate regimes all over the
world, and hence the dispute between different schools of economics continues.