2008 Public Lecture

                        The Single Monetary Policy and the Analytics of OCAs:
                              what has the Euro area experience taught us?

In association with the FT Business 
& LSE European Institute 'The Future of Europe lecture series'

The then Governor of the Bank of Greece, Dr Nikos Garganas, gave a public lecture at LSE on 30th April 2008 on his experience of operating within the 'euro-zone'.

Dr Garganas has much experience in this matter. He served as Governor from 2002-

8 and was Deputy Governor from 1996-2002. As such, he was a member of the EU’s Economic Policy Committee; its Monetary Policy Committee; the Economic & Financial Committee; the European Central Bank’s Governing Council; and, the ECB General Council. In short, he has been a member of every EU committee or council relevant to EMU for at least the last two decades. Alongside this experience, he has held a number of senior policy positions in Greece – including being Chief Economic Advisor to Costas Simitis, when Mr Simitis was Minister of National Economy in the 1980s.

In addition, Dr Garganas has published a number of books and papers on macroeconomic policy; economic modelling; EMU and monetary policy.

His lecture for the Observatory was entitled, 'The Single Monetary Policy and the Analytics of OCAs: what has the Euro area experience taught us? His focus was the economic theory debate over the relevance of optimal currency areas (OCA) to the success of the euro. In his lecture, Dr Garganas argued that the traditional way of thinking about OCAs overlooks the fact that the criteria used to judge optimality are, to some extent, endogenous. Moreover, the experience of the euro area demonstrates that the creation of a monetary union can itself create conditions that are favourable to the well-functioning of the union.

The lecture was followed by a dinner at which Professor George Gaskell, Pro-Director of the LSE. 

Nicholas C. Garganas