We review ten aspects of how floating exchange rates have worked in practice, contrasted with ten characteristics that the system was supposed to have in theory. We conclude that the foreign exchange market is characterized by high transactions-volume, short-term horizons, and an absence of...

The 1970's witnessed the dramatic evolution of the international monetary system from a regime of pegged exchange rates into a regime of flexible rates. This paper surveys the key issues and lessons from the experience with floating rates during the1970's. The main orientation is empirical and...

This paper integrates exchange-rate policy into a model of exchange- rate behavior, and examines the data econometrically to infer hypotheses about policy behavior in the 1970s. The model shows how unanticipated movements in money, the current account, and relative price levels will cause first...

The continuing depreciation of the dollar stands out as one of the big policy issues. It has started to impinge on U.S. monetary policy; it influences the chances for international commercial diplomacy, and it is enhancing the move toward European monetary integration. Above all it leaves most...

The paper argues that the reason real world fixed exchange rate regimes usually have finite bands instead of completely fixed exchange rates between realignments is that exchange rate bands, counter to the textbook result, give central banks some monetary independence, even with free...

Economists generally assert that countries sacrifice monetary independence when they peg their exchange rates. At the same time, central bankers frequently assert that pegging an exchange rate does not eliminate the independence of monetary policy. This paper examines the effects of money-supply...

Identifying exogenous variation in monetary policy is crucial for investigating central bank policy transmission. Using newly-collected archival real-time data utilized by the Central Bank Council of the German Bundesbank, we identify unexpected changes in German monetary policy from 580 policy...

The traditional approach to the estimation of the offset and sterilization equations can be criticized for the ad-hoc specification of the reaction function of the monetary authorities and the endogeneity of the domestic credit and foreign reserve variables in the estimated equations. The paper...

This paper examines dollar interventions by the G3 governments since 1989, and the reasons that trader reactions to these interventions might differ over time and across central banks. Market microstructure theory provides a framework for understanding the process by which sterilized central...