Minimal conditions for the survival of the euro

Abstract

This Max Weber lecture will look back at the history and forward at the prospects of the euro as Europe's single currency. The retrospective portion will revisit Bayoumi and Eichengreen's "Shocking Aspects of European Integration" which distinguished a European "core" and a European "periphery" and warned of problems for the periphery (composed, according to those early estimates, circa 1992, of Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy and the UK). The prospective part will look forward and ask whether monetary union without political union can be made to work, and if so how.