Most countries emerged from the Second World War with capital accounts that were closed to the rest of the world. Since then, a process of capital account opening has occurred, with the result that all developed and many emerging-market countries now have capital accounts that are both de facto...

A large measure of consensus exists about the substantive content of successful economic policy reform--macroeconomic discipline, microeconomic liberalization, and participation in the global economy--that is needed for an economy to enter the modern world. There is much less consensus on the...

This study brings readers up to date on the complicated and controversial subject of debt relief for the poorest countries of the world. What has actually been achieved? Has debt relief provided truly additional resources to fight poverty? How will the design and timing of the "enhanced Heavily...

The dollar rose by about 35 percent in real terms from 1995 through the end of 2001, supporting the booming US economy of the late 1990s but pushing the current account deficit to a record high of almost 5 percent of GDP. This special report provides alternative views of how large a dollar...

In the aftermath of the Asian/global financial crises of 1997-98, howshould emerging markets now structure their exchange rate systemsto prevent new crises from occurring? This study challengescurrent orthodoxy by advocating the revival of intermediate exchangerate regimes. In so doing,...

This study examines in detail the experiences of three countries that have in recent years operated exchange rate systems of "crawling bands," similar in spirit to the target zones that the author has recommended in the past. Williamson compares the succcessful experiences of 3 countries that...

Growing global imbalances threaten to induce a collapse of the dollar, which could in turn produce a severe recession in the rest of the world. This crisis could force countries to say "never again" and search for a system to prevent similar disasters. The system that could do so is a reference...

International investors poured vast sums of money into East Asian and Latin American countries during the mid-1990s, when the emerging market boom was at its peak. Then Thailand stumbled and panic seized the markets, and boom gave way to bust. Investors suffered large financial losses, while...

This volume is a successor of sorts to the Institute's 1986 volume Toward Renewed Economic Growth in Latin America, which blazed the trail for the market-oriented economic reforms that were adopted in Latin America in the subsequent years. It again presents the work of a group of leading Latin...

The problems of exchange rate misalignments and the resulting payments imbalances have plagued the world economy for decades. At the Louvre Accord of 1987 the Group of Five industrial countries adopted a system of reference ranges for exchange rate management, influenced by proposals of C. Fred...