The efforts of the central banks of Western industrial countries to stabilize exchange rates following the Louvre Agreement demonstrated yet again how difficult it can be to influence events in the foreign exchange markets. What factors are currently affecting exchange rates? What significance...

Recently, the calls for closer monetary co-operation between the Asian NICs and Japan have been becoming louder. The following article discusses the pros and cons of pegging to the yen and compares them with those of a basket peg.

Leaving foreign exchange markets to themselves may not lead to realistic and stable exchange rates. Thus appropriate criteria for interference must be defined. The OPTICA (Optimal Currency Area) Group which was appointed by the European Commission tried to work out appropriate rules for the EC....

The switch to floating exchange rates during the 1970s has given economists the first comprehensive opportunity to assess the arguments for and against floating. Much new work has been done on various aspects of floating exchange rate behaviour. This article attempts a limited survey of the...

The Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates was abandoned by the industrialised countries in March 1973. They switched to a system of flexible exchange rates. Representatives of the developing countries were particularly critical of the industrialised countries’ exchange rate flexibility....

It is still frequently argued that a random process would be the best way of predicting the DM/dollar exchange rate. In the following empirical analysis, however, Dr. Rolf Schneider comes to the conclusion that the behaviour of the dollar can be explained largely in terms of basic economic...