European monetary unification : theory, practice, and analysis / Barry Eichengreen.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 329-342) and index.

Print version record.

1. Introduction -- 2. One Money for Europe? Lessons from the U.S. Currency Union -- 3. Is Europe an Optimum Currency Area? -- 4. Shocking Aspects of European Monetary Unification -- 5. Ever Closer to Heaven? An Optimum Currency Area Index for European Countries -- 6. Labor Markets and European Monetary Unification -- 7. The Unstable EMS -- 8. The Political Economy of Fiscal Restrictions: Implications for Europe from the United States -- 9. Fiscal Policy and Monetary Union: Is There a Tradeoff between Federalism and Fiscal Restrictions? -- 10. A More Perfect Union? On the Logic of Economic Integration -- 11. How Will Transatlantic Policy Interactions Change with the Advent of EMU? -- 12. Epilogue: Inconsistent Quartets.

"At the beginning of 1998 the member states of the European Union will decide whether or not to go ahead with their monetary union and determine which countries qualify as members. There is a high likelihood that Stage III of the Maastricht process - monetary union itself - will commence on January 1, 1999, and that a single currency, to be known as the Euro, will replace the national currencies of the founding member states at the beginning of 2002"--BOOK JACKET. "Whether EMU is feasible and desirable is contested among economists and politicians alike. This book sheds light on the controversy by considering seven major aspects: (1) what the theory of optimum currency areas reveals about the EMU project, (2) how Europe compares with existing monetary unions such as the United States, (3) the crisis in the European monetary system and the feasibility of stabilizing exchange rates in the absence of monetary unification, (4) fiscal policy and EMU, (5) labor markets and EMU, (6) the connections between monetary and political union, and (7) EMU and the rest of the world."--BOOK JACKET. "The author views EMU as neither a grand achievement nor a terrible blunder, but as a process. He argues that the effects of monetary unification will depend on how it is structured and governed, and how quickly Europe's markets adapt to a single currency."--Jacket.

English.

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