Five years in a balloon

We analyse the effect of Slovakia’s euro adoption in 2009 on the country’s economic performance by using the synthetic control method. This method compares Slovakia’s economic performance with that of a weighted combination of comparable Central European economies that have remained outside the Euro zone. We estimate that by adopting the euro, Slovakia gained 10% of real GDP per capita by 2011. Strong anticipation effects are present as two thirds of this gain occurred already in 2008. Nevertheless, had Slovakia postponed adoption of the EUR by one year and kept its own currency during the recession in 2009, the economy would have been temporarily better off that year by 2%. These results survive various robustness tests.