I have noted many times since the Euro Area crisis started how Nicholas Kaldor foresaw it much earlier than anyone else. The year: 1971 ‼
I came across this article Nicholas Kaldor And Kazimierz Łaski On The Pitfalls Of The European Integration Process by Michael A. Landesmann, published in Dec 2019, which is really good. I like the phrase centrifugal forces in the abstract, as the Euro Area is designed to cause countries in it to fly apart.
An interesting snippet:
In sum, Kaldor’s analysis of the pitfalls of the Common Market comprises three components:
- the almost unavoidable processes leading to ‘structural external imbalances’;
- the detrimental impact of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), for a country like the UK …
- the fact that external imbalances would result in a ‘deflationary bias’ in the deficit countries … This tendency would be strengthened in a fixed exchange-rate regime and, even more so, in a monetary union that would not be complemented by a fiscal union.
…
Kaldor’s analysis points to an issue that is of central importance in the set-up of the EC (and continues to be of great relevance in the EU): the likelihood of what he calls the emergence of ‘structural (external) imbalances’. He refers in this respect to G. Myrdal’s ‘circular and cumulative causation’ processes … Which are the cumulative processes that Kaldor alludes to when predicting that integrated groups of countries will experience ‘structural external imbalances’?