In his provocative American Economic Review paper “A Theory of Optimum Currency Areas,” Mundell argued that as long as workers could move within a currency region to where the jobs were, the region could afford to forgo the equilibrating mechanism of exchange-rate adjustment. He credited another (future) Nobel Prize winner, James Meade, for having recognized the importance of labor mobility in earlier work, but criticized Meade for interpreting the idea too stringently, especially in the context of Europe’s nascent integration.
那么，如何看待诺贝尔奖获得者蒙代尔1961年的著名预言呢？蒙代尔说，国境线和货币边界并不需要大致重合。在他发表于《美国经济评论》（American Economic Review）的雄文《最优货币区理论》（A Theory of Optimum Currency Areas）中，蒙代尔指出，只要工人能在货币区内自由流动追逐工作，该货币区就可以形成一个汇率调整的均衡机制。蒙代尔将对劳动流动性的重要性的认识归功于另一位（未来）诺贝尔奖获得者米德，但也指出，米德对这一观点的解释太过严格，特别是在欧洲一体化刚刚出现萌芽的时候。