The stability of the international financial system is in doubt. Analysis of the system has focused mainly on the sustainability of financing the American trade deficit and has failed to understand the microeconomics of transactions within the system. According to this brief by Thomas I. Palley,...

This paper proposes a comprehensive yet evolutionary reform of the global monetary non-system that evolved out of the breakdown of the original Bretton Woods arrangement in the early 1970s. It includes: (i) a global reserve system that mixes the multi-currency arrangement with an active use of...

If emerging markets are to achieve their objective of joining the ranks of industrialized, developed countries, they must use their economic and political influence to support radical change in the international financial system. This working paper recommends John Maynard Keynes's "clearing...

This book provides a good basis for a graduate course in international finance. It also serves as a reference source for professional economists. Though other good surveys and handbooks are available, they are too extensive to serve as a graduate textbook. In many cases they are outdated, as...

What explains the US dollar's role in the global economy and the tensions affecting its likely persistence? Most analyses start from Triffin's dilemma, which accurately captured specific but partial tensions of a global monetary system based on essentially fixed exchange rates, gold backing for...

The 1944 "Bretton Woods Agreement" gave birth to the new international financial system marked by the centrality of the US dollar which is a crucial pillar of the global power of the United States. Over the past eight decades, the asymmetry of the shrinking US economic weight in the world...

The squeeze in US dollar liquidity that emerged with the global financial crisis highlighted the risks associated with the current global financial system. Asia was adversely affected by the crisis not only because of its dependence on trade, but also because of its heavy reliance on the US...

I propose a model of the reserve currency paradigm that centers on liquidity demand for safe assets. In global recessions, the demand for U.S. safe assets increases and raises their convenience yields, giving rise to stronger dollar and countercyclical seigniorage revenues. The seigniorage...