At the same time, some recent research (for example, Kalemli-Ozcan et al., 2003, and Giannone and Reichlin, 2005) documents that risk sharing tends to increase in a currency union, bolstering the case for higher specialisation in production. The peculiarity of this channel is that any resulting asymmetries in GDP fluctuations would not translate in income volatility because ownership is diversified.
This  2  BIS Review 46/2005  essentially will help to smooth consumption across countries and, therefore, limit the welfare cost of GDP fluctuations. Overall, the time span since the start of the EMU is too short for strong empirical conclusions and a view of the effects of EMU on specialisation is consequently still difficult to obtain.