Beginning of Essay
At their last summit in Madrid, the leaders of the European Union confirmed their intention to press ahead with Monetary Union according to the timetable and conditions laid out in the Maastricht Treaty. While the summit also filled in some of the detail of the t ....

Middle of Essay
.... of Europe because countries will no longer be free to devalue their currencies in order to maintain their international competitiveness. Are these fears justified? The force of the skeptics argument depends crucially on the time frame under consideration. First by removing the possibility of devaluation can a single currency condemn a region or nation to permanently higher unemployment than it would otherwise have? The answer is No. In the long-run both a nation's unemployment rate and its real exchange rate (that is the price of foreign goods and services relative to the price of domestic goods and services expressed in a common currency) are dete ....