It will also have to pay for the retooling of information management and delivery systems, as well as face increased uncertainties in its core deposits. At the same time, however, the larger single market will create new opportunities for banks, particularly in the areas of investment banking and the cross-border sale of deposits, mutual funds, and other savings products. On balance, it seems fair to conclude that the commercial position and earnings of many European banks are likely to come under pressure. This may accelerate the ongoing restructuring of Europe’s banking industry, a process that has been confined, to date, primarily to developments within each country. More broadly, there can be no doubt that the implications of the growth of a more efficient and cost-effective market for euro-denominated capital would extend well beyond Europe. The availability of a new, low-cost channel for portfolio investment, for example, could help reverse the traditional reluctance of households and many institutional investors worldwide to invest internationally -- a reluctance that has long puzzled academics and policymakers. Moreover, a well-developed market for euro-denominated capital would encourage institutional investors from the United States and elsewhere to acquire diversified European portfolios offered in a single currency. In fact, this development could be accelerated if member governments chose to deepen the euro market by increasing the available range of bond maturities, which in some countries is somewhat limited at the short and long ends.
While less flexible labor markets and the absence of a federal fiscal system will certainly pose constant challenges for the management of a common European currency, a fluctuating exchange rate need not be the optimal way to respond to these shortcomings. The argument that Europe -- even a core component of Europe -- can ill afford to renounce exchange rate flexibility rests crucially on the view that Europe is significantly more BIS Review 109/1997  -6-  heterogeneous than the United States and, therefore, more vulnerable to country-specific shocks that can best be corrected by exchange rate changes. I do not support this view. Rather, I believe that in many respects differences among the European economies have been over-emphasized in the public debate. It is possible to suggest, for example, that the economies of some European countries have more in common today than do those of some individual states in the United States, such as New York and Michigan or California and Idaho. Moreover, as a result of the convergence of economic policy objectives, the economic cycles among many European countries have become more synchronized over the last ten years, a trend that is likely to be reinforced by monetary unification. Furthermore, when shocks are mainly at the industry level -- for instance, when a recession hits the automobile or steel industry in Germany and France -- the German and French economies would hardly benefit from an exchange rate change. Such a change, in this case, simply would not affect the appropriate relative prices.