The introduction of the euro was an important event for the world economy and the international political system. For the first time in history, a substantial group of European countries-eleven of the fifteen members of the European Union including three members of the G-7-have voluntarily agreed to replace their national currencies with a single currency. The euro area has already become established as the second largest currency area in the world and will therefore become a major player in the international monetary system. The creation of the euro poses a number of interesting questions. Will the euro be a strong or a weak currency? Will the euro challenge the leading position hitherto held by the United States dollar and would sharing of the burdens and advantages of reserve currency status improve or worsen the stability of the international monetary system? How will the euro affect US relations with Europe? Does the formation of the euro intensify European integration in other fields? Is a bi-polar international monetary system viable? These and other issues motivated the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies and the Pierre Werner Foundation to organize an international conference in Luxembourg on December 3-4, 1998, on the eve of the birth of the euro. At the outset we were aware that the issue of the euro went far beyond pure economics. Money, after all, is too important a subject to be left to economists.

In this volume the reader will find interesting forms of analysis on Japan just as it was embarking on potentially the most important changes in its political system since 1955, when the Liberal Democratic Party was created through a merger of Japan's two dominant conservative parties of that era. With the old Cold War verities no longer in place, new challenges arose for the Japanese government and Japanese corporations. The challenges of the 1990s include a protracted domestic economic downturn, and the need to begin redefining Japan's international profile in the face of an increasingly powerful China, an ever more desperate North Korea, and shifts in the shared responsibility built into the US-Japan security treaty.

The introduction of the euro was an important event for the world economy and the international political system. For the first time in history, a substantial group of European countries-eleven of the fifteen members of the European Union including three members of the G-7-have voluntarily agreed to replace their national currencies with a single currency. The euro area has already become established as the second largest currency area in the world and will therefore become a major player in the international monetary system. The creation of the euro poses a number of interesting questions. Will the euro be a strong or a weak currency? Will the euro challenge the leading position hitherto held by the United States dollar and would sharing of the burdens and advantages of reserve currency status improve or worsen the stability of the international monetary system? How will the euro affect US relations with Europe? Does the formation of the euro intensify European integration in other fields? Is a bi-polar international monetary system viable? These and other issues motivated the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies and the Pierre Werner Foundation to organize an international conference in Luxembourg on December 3-4, 1998, on the eve of the birth of the euro. At the outset we were aware that the issue of the euro went far beyond pure economics. Money, after all, is too important a subject to be left to economists.