Efectos regionales de la politica monetaria: implicaciones para los paises de la zona euro

Following the Optimum Currency Areas approach, asymmetric shocks play a fundamental role to determine the benefits and the costs derived from the establishment of a monetary area. In this sense, some recent studies show that an important reduction in the level of the asymmetries of the shocks in real terms in the last years between the European countries has been produced as a result of the major coordination of the economic policies and the approximation of the productive structures. However, an important question in the new economic scene, and not enough considered in the recent literature, is the possible destabilization role of the common monetary policy derived from differences in monetary policy transmission mechanisms in the different Euro Zone countries and regions. In this paper, we consider this question from a theoretical point of view and we analyse empirically the existence of regional differences in the effects of the monetary policy for the Spanish case with the aim of identifying the most important factors of this asymmetry at the European level.