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....

The IMF's Interim Committee recently for the first time discussed the creation of a “Substitution Account” to convert certain amounts of excess reserve currencies into SDRs. This issue is likely to be on the agenda of the next annual meeting of the IMF in the fall of this year. Prof....

Among the various limitations put by the IMF on the free use of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) is the reconstitution requirement which binds participants in the Special Drawing Account to maintain a stipulated average level of allocated SDRs. Using the example of Zambia which is representative...

Contrary to the expectations of those who advocated flexible exchange rates prior to 1973, Williamson, in his study on exchange rate flexibility and reserve use, presented data which suggested “the paradoxical conclusion that reserve use actually increased following the adoption of...

The main objectors to a link being established between special drawing rights (SDRs) and the financing of development have in the past been the industrial countries. They have been pointing out that SDRs were created for other purposes - more effective control over international liquidity - and...