Growing global imbalances threaten to induce a collapse of the dollar, which could in turn produce a severe recession in the rest of the world. This crisis could force countries to say "never again" and search for a system to prevent similar disasters. The system that could do so is a reference rate system—where countries' authorities are forbidden from intervening in order to push the exchange rate too far from what is termed the "reference rate." It could help a country's authorities manage its exchange rate to avoid large misalignments, assist the private sector in forming more dependable expectations of future exchange rates and thus to manage their businesses more efficiently in a world of floating exchange rates, and aid the International Monetary Fund in designing and managing an effective system of multilateral surveillance. The world economy would function better as a result, with less chance of the global imbalances leading to a world recession.

This report comprises three papers written by staff members of the Fund's Research Department on issues arising out of the reports on the international monetary system prepared in 1985 by the Group of Ten (representing the industrial countries participating in the General Arrangements to Borrow) and the intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four on International Monetary Affairs. These two reports, which appear as appendices to this volume, were transmitted to the Interim Committee of the Fund's Board of Governors and were subsequently discussed by the Fund's Executive Board in early 1986.

In the two decades prior to publication of this 1994 book, international monetary relations had been characterised by latent instability, and then by severe tensions. Yet the issue of reforming the international monetary system does not appear on the agenda of the policy makers of the major countries involved. The International Monetary System tries to analyse this apparent contradiction. It brings together contributions from some of the most authoritative academic economists and monetary officials, and examines each of the fundamental functions of the international monetary system. There is broad support for improving present monetary arrangements with the aim of ensuring more stable conditions in monetary and financial markets and of promoting the orderly adjustment of payments disequilibria. For political reasons a fully-fledged reform exercise is unlikely, but very few experts seem to like the status quo. This book provides the reader with a comprehensive account of the institutional and policy changes required to manage an increasingly integrated and interdependent global monetary and financial system.

Since the five largest industrial democracies concluded the Plaza Agreement in 1985, the theory and practice of international economic policy coordination has become the subject of spirited academic and public-policy debate. While some view policy coordination as crucial for the construction of an improved international monetary system, others fear that it risks delaying or weakening the implementation of macroeconomic and structural policies. In these papers and comments, prominent international economists consider past and present interpretations of the meaning of international policy coordination; conditions necessary for coordination to be beneficial both to the direct participants and the global economy; influential factors for the quantitative impact of coordination; obstacles to coordination; the most—and least—effective methods of coordination; and future directions of the coordination process, including processes associated with greater fixity of exchange rates. These studies will be readily accessible to policymakers, while offering sophisticated analyses to interested scholars of the global economy.

This book describes and evaluates the literature on exchange rate economics. It provides a wide-ranging survey, with background on the history of international monetary regimes and the institutional characteristics of foreign exchange markets, an overview of the development of conceptual and empirical models of exchange rate behavior, and perspectives on the key issues that policymakers confront in deciding whether, and how, to try to stabilize exchange rates. The treatment of most topics is reasonably compact, with extensive references to the literature for those desiring to pursue individual topics further. The level of exposition is relatively easy to comprehend; the historical and institutional material (part I) and the discussion of policy issues (part III) contain no equations or technical notation, while the chapters on models of exchange rate behavior (part II) are written at a level intelligible to first-year graduate students or advanced undergraduates. The book will enlighten both students and policymakers, and should also serve as a valuable reference for many research economists.

Edited conference report on the effects of the international monetary system on developing countries - discusses exchange rate policies and floating currencys, Terms of Trade and monetary transfers, petroleum price increases, foreign exchange reserves and financing needs of such countries, etc. Diagrams, references and statistical tables. Conference held in Washington dc 1975 June 4.

The Rules of the Game brings together essays written over the course of thirty years by a major figure in the field. McKinnon analyzes and compares a wide variety of important international monetary regimes: the establishment of the gold standard in the nineteenth century, Bretton Woods, the dollar standard, floating exchange rates, the European Monetary System, and current proposals for reforming world monetary arrangements. The essays are unique in that they specify precisely the rules of the game for each international monetary regime - past, present, and future. For ease of reference, the book offers boxed summaries of each set of rules and then discusses their advantages and disadvantages, from the gold standard down to the author's proposal for a common monetary standard for the twenty-first century.

This update of the guidelines published in 2001 sets forth the underlying framework for the Reserves Data Template and provides operational advice for its use. The updated version also includes three new appendices aimed at assisting member countries in reporting the required data.