Volume III, edited by Robert C. Effros, contains the collected views of banking and legal experts, gathered at the third IMF-sponsored seminar of central banks general counsels. Matters of both international and domestic concern are addressed. The contributors analyze topics covering developments in international financial institutions; the progress of the European Union toward monetary union and a unified banking and securities market; the economic reform of Latin America; the resolution of the debt crisis; and banking regulations and reform in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Did bilateral and regional bargaining choke off international commerce and finance in the 1930s and prolong the Great Depression? Is the open world economic system now being placed at risk by explicitly discriminatory practices that erode respect for the GATT, the IMF, and the IBRD? Most political economists would answer in the affirmative, warning that bilateral and regional preferences are at best inefficient and at worst catastrophic. By contrast, Kenneth Oye shows how economic discrimination can foster international economic openness by facilitating political exchange.

Some vols. include supplemental journals of "such proceedings of the sessions, as, during the time they were depending, were ordered to be kept secret, and respecting which the injunction of secrecy was afterwards taken off by the order of the House."