The most obvious benefit of a single currency is that it will no longer be necessary to incur (引起) the costs of exchange from one currency to another. Travelers know that these costs are not negligible. First of all, there is a commission ______ (usually a fixed amount); secondly, the price ______ which the traveler purchases foreign currency for domestic currency ______ from the price of exchanging back surplus (过剩) foreign currency. The removal of these transaction costs constitutes a gain from monetary union.

Another benefit is that the removal of exchange rate ______ between the countries of the EU would provide much more assurance to ______ location decisions. At present, a company takes ______ of the risk of exchange rate variation in its location decision, and this may lead it to scatter its plants across the various economies, to hedge against (防范) the risk of exchange rate variation. Removing this source of uncertainty allows investors to ______ according to economies of scale and may lead to more plants of ______ size, a reduction in unit cost of production, and increase in ______.

A single currency provides the ______ for counter-inflationary (反通胀) policies. A single currency could lead to a ______ in the market discrimination that currently exists in the EU (for example, prices of motor cars of the ______ specification (规格) stand higher in the UK than they do in France) as the quotation (报价) of prices in common currency discourages arbitrage (套利) activity and reduces the market division ______ which such discrimination relies. ______, firms in one country cannot continue to ______ their prices higher than their European competitors and still remain competitive.