Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I see it, I think the distinction between consequences and externalities is that externalities are applied to cost and pricing, but not concepts. Wikipedia doesn't go too deep into when externality analysis is appropriate or useful, but hints at this in the following sentence to the one you quoted. >Externalities can be considered as unpriced components that are involved in either consumer or producer market trans…
> the transaction price of "centralized currency adoption" is not a priced object Of course it is. Joining a currency union carries costs. Broadly speaking, you're correct: the term has ambiguous meaning. My point is that isn't something new, but an element that has always been with the term.
Two actors can both generate value from a transaction due to a difference between price and their respective utility value for what is traded. This producer and consumer surplus is explicitly distinct from externalities.
If there is a currency deal between the US and Argentina, the consequences to those countries are not an externality. However, if this deal produces a 2nd order change in the Chinese RMB, some would call that an externality, although I would call it a consequence (because externality implies mispricing)