Readiness Assessment of the CIS Countries to Create a Monetary Union with Russia on the Basis of the Criteria of the Theory of Optimum Currency Area

Recently there have been intensively developing integration processes in the CIS area and one of the possible and reasonable scenarios of their future development seems to be the establishment of a monetary union by some CIS countries. This research attempts a theoretical study of the CIS countries’ potential readiness to establish a monetary union with Russia basing on the presumptions and criteria developed in a theory of optimum currency areas. The first part of the research specifies some basic criteria of optimum currency area theory, which define the readiness of countries to establish a monetary union as well as certain benefits and costs of such a union. The second part of the research assesses the readiness of the CIS countries to establish a monetary union with Russia basing on a range of macroeconomic indicators determined by selected theoretical criteria.