Wolfson economics prize: the short-listed plans

Five shortlisted entries for the Wolfson economics prize have put forward their ideas on the least disruptive way to organise a breakup of the euro
A banner on a building in Brussels showing a Euro coin
A banner on a building in Brussels showing a euro coin. Photograph: Francois Lenoir/Reuters Francois Lenoir/REUTERS

The shortlisted candidates for the Wolfson prize are:

Roger Bootle and his team from the consultancy Capital Economics

Bootle's theme is that the weaker eurozone countries are deeply uncompetitive. The alternative to years of painful austerity is departure from monetary union, which would result in a weaker currency and cheaper exports, and the Bootle paper is a practical guide for how that could be achieved. The transition would happen amid great secrecy over a weekend, with temporary capital controls. The redenomination of government debt in the new national currency guarantees a default.

Oxford University engineering graduate Cathy Dodds

The paper produced by Dodds, who worked in the City and is now a private investor, uses the analogy of dividing an egg into its white and yolk to explain how an orderly breakup of the euro could be achieved. She would split the single currency into two (or more) regions, with countries that need to be made more competitive the yolk regions and those that do not the white regions. Each region would have its own central bank, monetary policy and currency. The euro disappears to be replaced by a currency unit based on a basket of white and yolk currencies.

Jens Nordvig and Nick Firoozye at Nomura Securities

With around €10 trillion (£8.3tn) of foreign law debt contracts outstanding, economists Nordvig and Firoozye say a fragmentation of the single currency would risk a legal minefield and hence quickly become disorderly. They suggest that debt contracts falling under national or local law should be redenominated in the new currency of a country leaving the euro, and that debt contracts falling under foreign law should be redenominated into a second European Currency Unit (ECU) using a formula based on a country's weight within monetary union.

Neil Record of Record Currency Management

For Record, who has worked for the Bank of England and Mars, the departure of even one country means the whole of monetary union has to be dissolved because the argument that the single currency is permanent no longer holds true. His paper looks at the cloak-and-dagger operation that would be needed to ensure details of a breakup plan remained secret. Record proposes the establishment of a special taskforce by Germany and France to lay out a week-by-week timetable for the transition.

Jonathan Tepper is chief editor of Variant Perception

History suggests, according to Tepper, that the breakup of monetary unions rarely leads to the "armageddon" outcome predicted in advance. His submission argues that the real problems are not created by exit but by the weaknesses that lead to the pressure for exit in the first place. Tepper says departure from the euro would be good for some countries and they should not fear it. Instead, they should learn lessons from the past and plan in secret to move back to national currencies over an extended weekend.