This policy brief updates Cline and Williamson's estimates of fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEERs) to April 2011. Most currencies appear to have been reasonably close to their FEERs in April 2011. The most important exceptions are China, on the weak side, and the United States, on the...

The government of Egypt recently stated that external financial assistance is necessary in the present economic situation and has expressed a strong preference for receiving it in part via debt relief. Williamson and Khan explore whether there is a case for debt relief and if so what form this...

The currency markets have been extremely disturbed for the last three months. The period witnessed a major strengthening of the US dollar in September, then the European currency crisis, a recovery of the euro when the markets believed that the crisis was being controlled, and then a rebound of...

Cline and Williamson calculate a new set of fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEERs) based on the new round of International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections in the spring 2012 World Economic Outlook. These show that on a trade-weighted basis the US dollar is now overvalued by 3–4...

Increasing nervousness in world financial markets give new relevance to the long-standing issues of global current account adjustment. It reminds policymakers that this adjustment, if improperly managed, could lead to further drops in assets prices, disruptions in the global trading system, and...

It has been 80 years since John Maynard Keynes first proposed a plan that would have disciplined persistent surplus countries. But the Keynes Plan, like the subsequent Volcker Plan in 1972-74, was defeated by the major surplus country of the day (the United States and Germany, respectively), and...

Cline and Williamson update their estimates of fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEERs) for leading advanced and emerging-market economies. This policy brief is a sequel to Policy Brief 08-7, published last July, and is based on the latest developments in the world economy. The authors,...

In this update of estimates of fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEERs) for 30 major economies, Cline and Williamson report on changes in disequilibria in exchange markets since March 2009, the date to which their earlier (June 2009) calculations referred. The overvaluation of the dollar...

This policy brief updates Cline and Williamson's estimates of fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEERs) to May 2010 using the data to March contained in the April issue of the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook. The IMF's data are updated to May by subsequent exchange rate...

Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), the reserve asset issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have lately reappeared in the news. The G-20 leaders, at their recent meeting in London, endorsed a proposal to issue $250 billion in SDRs to counteract the financial crisis, while the governor of...