The IMF's internal analysis of exchange rate issues has been guided by, and limited by, the conceptual and empirical frameworks that have emerged from the collective research of the economics profession. The research has provided several general approaches that are useful for assessing whether...

This paper analyzes institutional arrangements for exchange rate systems and reviews what we know. It looks at the foreign exchange market, different balance of payment situations in which countries find themselves and the necessary exchange rate adjustments. It studies the options that are...

This paper describes the essence of the Bretton Woods conference. The Bretton Woods conference was one of a number of inter-allied conferences in the later part of World War II that led to the creation of a new international organization. The point of this paper is not to defend the Bretton...

This paper's field evidence is: (1) many official sectors rapidly forget the damage of the 1982-85 exchange rate liquidity crisis and reverted to what caused that crisis, namely a closed economy clean floats perspective; and (2) the 2006-2008/9 exchange rate liquidity shock would have been more...

The paper traces the dangers in the closed economy perspective of a monetary policy focused on adomestic inflation goal under a clean float. Field evidence of the damage wrought from this perspective isreinforced by that from a laboratory experiment. The laboratory experiment avoids measurement...

In January 1995, four Latin American countries, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay joined their destinies within a common and ambitious enterprise called MERCOSUR. MERCOSUR, the Common Market of the South, represents an important economic integration area that generates a GDP of $US 600...

In this paper, we compare two one-factor short rate models: the Hull White model and the Black-Karasinski model. Despite their inherent shortcomings the short rate models are being used quite extensively by the practitioners for risk-management purposes. The research, as part of students'...