Morris Goldstein

Global currency markets have remained unsettled. The dollar hit record lows against both the yen and the mark in 1995. The Mexican crisis led to a free fall of the peso. Renewed tensions in the European Monetary System required devaluations in Spain and Portugal. It is thus fortuitous that the world's major countries, starting with the G-7 summit in Italy in June 1994, have agreed to reexamine the world monetary system and the role of its chief institutional custodian the International Monetary Fund. Yet there is little agreement on what should be done. Sweeping change in the form of explicit, binding exchange rate targets for the United States, Japan, and Europe does not seem to be in the cards. More limited reforms might gain more acceptance. But what should be the nature of those reforms? Would they be worth the effort? This study sets out a modest agenda for managing the exchange rate system, improving the system's early warning capabilities, and strengthening the IMF s oversight responsibilities. It could help improve functioning of the world economy and global financial stability.

A Modest Agenda

The Exchange Rate System and the IMF

Carmen M. Reinhart

Graciela Laura Kaminsky

This study reviews the literature on the origins of currency and banking crises. It presents empirical tests on the performance of alternative early-warning indicators for emerging-market economies. The book also identifies crisis-threshold values for early-warning indicators.

An Early Warning System for Emerging Markets

Assessing Financial Vulnerability

William H. Branson

Jacob A. Frenkel

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.

Morris Goldstein

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