ABSTRACT
With the aim of providing the most efficient mechanisms able to ensure international monetary co-ordination, modern analysis does not challenge, from both an analytical and historical point of view, the so-called ‘corner solutions’ corresponding respectively to nominal anchoring systems, monetary unions and flexible exchange rates. These corner solutions delimit a triangular area within which the other (and inefficient) monetary arrangements are located. The rather successful launching of the Euro, the repeatedly reaffirmed propensity of small dependent economies to adopt currency boards or to dollarise and the tendency of the remaining developed nations to defend flexible parities regimes confirm the polarisation of current monetary regimes around the acceptance of these three corner solutions. This rather stable but asymmetric equilibrium between different monetary systems has something unsatisfactory in the sense that it renders complex the transition processes of monetary systems and traps the national economies in definitive options similar to lock-in.
