Príspevok Roberta A. Mundella k menovej integrácii
A CONTRIBUTION OF ROBERT A. MUNDELL TO MONETARY INTEGRATION

Summary/Abstract: The Nobel Prize for economics 1999 was awarded to Robert A. Mundell, who is the professor at the Columbia University in New York, for his analysis of the monetary and fiscal policy in different foreign currency regimes and for his optimal monetary region analysis. Even if his scientific works were born more than 30 years ago they have re-mained up-to-date and have formed the integrated part of modern international eco-nomic science. This article is dealing with the most important contributions of Robert A. Mundell towards the economic science development. During the Bretton-Wood monetary system period and under the condition of a limi-ted mobility of capital, Mundell analyzed the monetary and fiscal policy in the condition of various foreign currency rates regimes. In his pioneer study he developed so called mode of IS-LM for a closed economy and amended it by the international trade and capital mobility. On the basis of his analysis Mundell derived the following conclusions: the fiscal policy is highly efficient in the environment with fixed rates and with a per-fect capital mobility since the fiscal expansion increases interest rates, thus forcing a central bank to increase money supply in order to support a stable exchange rates and in this way to improve the effect of the fiscal expansion. In comparison with this, the monetary poli-cy under described environment was found inefficient. With the fixed exchange rates the central bank cannot provide an independent monetary policy. Within the system of floa-ting exchange rates, according to Mundell, the monetary policy is highly efficient because the monetary expansion leads to devaluation of the local cur-rency and increases exports and incomes. In contrary, the fiscal policy in the focus of incomes proved to be inefficient. The fiscal expansion brings about devaluation of the currency and pushes away the net exports. The original Mundell-Fleming’s model has certain shortcomings, for example it is a considerable simplification regarding expectations of economic subjects about the exchange rates development and the assumption of the short-term lack of flexibility in prices. Such weak points were improved by other scientists, who incorporated their rational assumptions and price flexibility in their analysis, but it did not essentially change the analysis results. Robert A. Mundell in his essay from 1961 was the first scientist who opened the is-sue of the optimal monetary region and raised a question: what are the best conditions for the introduction of a single currency for a group of countries? His work was pub-lished in the period when polemics about advantages or disadvantages of a fixed or floating exchange rate were mostly discussed at the academic platform, the existence of a national currency was regarded as inevitable and there was hardly someone who would think a country can give up its national currency and leave its monetary sover-eignty. R. Mundell described the monetary region a

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