The master thesis examines the development of competitiveness in Germany and Italy in the context of common currency and outlines the implications of this development. The theoretical part focuses on the perception of competitiveness on national level and the impact of the Economic and Monetary Union membership on the economies and their competitiveness in general. Subsequently, the most commonly observed indicators concerning national competitiveness from a narrower and broader point of view are introduced. In the practical part, broader economic and historical context is presented, followed by an assessment of the competitiveness of both economies on the basis of selected indicators: unit labour costs, the labour market situation, productivity, export performance and structure, nominal and real exchange rate developments and current account developments. The final part analyses the development of competitiveness according to the multi-criteria assessments of the World Economic Forum and the International Institute for Management Development.

Growth and Stability Pact is the primary tool of the coordination of economic policy. This thesis deals with the historical development of the Pact, epmhasising its modification and furthermore its eligibility as means of enforcing the fiscal discipline of member states.

This work summarizes readiness of the Czech Republic for addoption of common currency euro. It describes the history of common European currency in the first chapter and economic and monetary union in second chapter. The fourth chapter analyzes the fulfillment of Maastricht convergence criteria in the Czech Republic in comparison to Slovenia. The last chapter focuses on the fulfillment of the optimum currency area criteria in these countries

The paper examines the degree of convergence between the business cycles of the new EU member states and eurozone. This convergence is a necessary condition for a troublefree operation of a monetary union. Several analyses have been used to assess the problem -- pure time series correlation, correlation of detrended time series and of lagged series, and above all impulse-response functions correlation and forecast error variance decomposition. Finally, the paper briefly assesses the evolution of business cycles convergence.

The diploma thesis is focused on the evaluation of the macroeconomic indicators of Euro Area Member States within 1997 -- 2008. This evaluation considers both the time period before and after introduction of Euro. The first chapter is dedicated to the development of the European and Monetary Union and the following two chapters contain analysis of economic development of the Euro Area within 1997 -- 2001 and 2002 -- 2008. The last chapter results from the current situation on the world markets and it is concerned in the evaluation of the development in the times of economic crisis including measures which has been adopted. By comparison of these two time periods the attention is aimed to the evaluation of the economic development of the Member States in terms of chosen macroeconomic indicators which results from convergence criteria. They are also complemented by important national economic indicators.

The study is focused on analysing of the process of convergence of the Czech republic to the European Economic and Monetary Union. There are three main topics: real convergence, nominal convergence and the Maastricht convergence criteria. The status of convergence of the Czech republic is analysed at the end of the year 2008.

The thesis deals with the Economic and Monetary Union and its implications for the Czech Republic and Poland. It defines the main terms, outlines the development of monetary integration in Europe and specifies the conditions necessary for introducing the euro. The main objective of the thesis is, based on an analysis of strategic documents of the Czech Republic and Poland, to assess their readiness to join the Economic and Monetary Union and to describe contributions and risks related to introducing the euro.

The imbalances within the Euro-zone were the main reasons of the crisis that had led to the growing budget deficits in the Southern Europe resulting in the accumulation of unsustainable debt. The imbalances were caused by the declining competitiveness of the South vis-s-vis the North. The main causes of the declining competitiveness are the differences in unit labor costs invoked by different regulations concerning the labor markets in the Euro-zone countries and the diverging levels of productivity, which is liked with the different levels of technological advancement. The contributing factor is the institutional imperfections of the EMU, that did not allow the countries in Southern Europe to restore their competitiveness by traditional means without providing them with alternatives.

The economic crisis of 2008 had substantial impacts on the global economy. The European Monetary Union was affected as well, however, the economic impacts also stirred up political discussions concerning functioning of the European Union and its unity as divergence of economic means among the member countries intensified during the crisis. Inflation and real interest rate differentials have to substantial degree the ability to measure the divergence among the member countries of a monetary union. A number of empirical studies measuring the differentials in the Euro area were conducted since the start of the financial crisis in 2008. These studies show growing inflation and real interest rate differentials among the countries of the Euro area, argue that the European Monetary Union is becoming less stable and often question its future. This paper conducts similar empirical analysis; however, it differs from the above mentioned works of other authors by the larger time gap between the start of financial crisis and the time of conducting the analysis as it uses data until the year of 2013. This paper also contributes to current literature by the methodology it uses. The inflation and interest rate differentials in EMU are calculated by two methods and their results are subsequently compared, which has not been done before. The inflation and interest rate differentials are calculated for the USA as well in order to have an entity which can be considered as a hypothetical optimum currency area and to which the differentials of EMU could be compared. The results of the analysis in this paper will state whether the magnitude of inflation and interest rate differentials is too high and it will also either confirm the trend of divergence of inflation and real interest rates within the Euro area or show that this divergence is only a short-time period phenomenon of after-crisis years. As this is an important and very recent issue of European Monetary Union the results of this paper should form interesting contribution to current literature on this topic.

This diploma thesis deals with the problem of real convergence of new member countries of the Eurozone. Development in recent years in Europe has clearly shown that monetary union is suitable only for homogenous group of countries. The main aim of the thesis is to analyze the progress of convergence in Slovakia, Slovenia and Estonia after the year 2000 and answer the question which country was best prepared to join the monetary union. Used method of investigation is analysis of historical time series and regression analysis. Main conclusion of the thesis is that highest level of convergence was achieved in Slovenia, but the country with lowest cost of joining Eurozone was Estonia. In final part of the thesis is presented own forecast of future development of real convergence until the year 2030. Theoretical background of the prognosis is based on Solow's growth model and resulting theory of convergence.