The gold standard emerged as the international monetary system by the end of the 19th century. We formally study its properties in a micro-founded model and find that the scarcity of the world gold stock not only results in a suboptimal output of goods that are purchased with money but also...

A handful of currencies, especially the US dollar, play a dominant role in international trade. We survey the active theoretical and empirical literature that documents patterns of currency use in global trade, the implications of dominant currencies for international transmission of shocks,...

This paper examines the effects of restrictions on international financial markets. We analyze a general equilibrium, rational expectations model of a two-country world in which well-functioning international financial markets premit trade in all state-contingent securities except insofar as...

The recent balance-of-payments literature shows that-speculative attacks on a pegged exchange rate must sometimes-occur if the path of the rate is riot to offer abnormal profit opportunities. Such attacks are fully rational, as they reflect the market's response to a regime breakdown that is...

This paper analyzes inevitable transitions between fixed and floating exchange-rate regimes in a balance-of-payments model where individual preferences are explicitly specified. The goal is to assessthe analogy between speculative attacks in foreign exchange markets and attacks on official...

The purpose of this paper is to describe the behavior of that subset of prices and price indexes that is relevant to the theory of balance of payments adjustment. The theoretical writings on the balance of payments may be viewed at this juncture as falling into two main groups -- the "standard"...

We analyze a two-country economy with complete markets, featuring two national currencies as well as a global (crypto)currency. If the global currency is used in both countries, the national nominal interest rates must be equal and the exchange rate between the national currencies is a risk-...

This lecture presents a broad overview of postwar analytical thinking on international macroeconomics, culminating in a more detailed discussion of very recent progress. Along the way, it reviews important empirical evidence that has inspired alternative modeling approaches, as well as...

The organization of this paper is as follows. Section I builds an empirically implementable model of the current account. Likewise, Section II derives the essential time series properties of the real exchange rate. Positive implications of the intertemporal approach against panel and...