Two developments are currently shaping Europe's financial and foreign exchange markets: Innovations, including the private use of the ECU, and the erratic fluctuations of the US dollar. Professor Nydegger analyses the causes and effects of these developments from the perspective of the world...

As the recent struggles connected with the readjustment of exchange rates within the European Monetary System have shown, the relatively unproblematic "running in" period of the EMS, which was supposed to be a constructive contribution to the creation of a more viable international monetary...

The record of the European Monetary System at the five-year mark is rather a disappointment for the System’s advocates. Has the “EMS experiment” failed? Or is there potential for developing the System further to the advantage of all member countries?

Recently the Interim Committee of the International Monetary Fund met in Hamburg without making significant progress on the proposal for a substitution account. One of the main initiatives toward restructuring the international monetary system thus was postponed if not indefinitely suspended....

Critics of the EMS claim that it has failed to realise the hopes aroused at the time of its inception; a convergence of economic policies, they maintain, has not been induced by fixed exchange rates. What is the true position with regard to the convergence of economic policies?

The none too firmly established position of the IMF with regard to the realization of the objectives of its Articles of Agreement has been additionally impaired by the establishment of the European Monetary System. From an international point of view a revision of the present EMS concept would...

Last weeks' dollar crisis which ended with the devaluation of the dollar emphasised once more the need for a reform of the international monetary system. It also brought to the open the necessity to reorganise the EEC monetary relations. The floating of pound and lira seems to support this case.