U.S. financial regulation has traditionally made functional and institutional regulation roughly equivalent. However, the gradual shift away from Glass-Steagall and the introduction of the Financial Modernization Act (FMA) generated a disorderly mix of functions and products across institutions,...

This paper provides an analysis of Keynes's original Bancor proposal as well as more recent proposals for fixed exchange rates. We argue that these schemes fail to pay due attention to the importance of capital movements in today's economy, and that they implicitly adopt an unsatisfactory notion...

In the context of the low levels of regional cooperation among South Asian countries when compared with the successful results from cooperation in East Asia (consisting of South East and East Asian countries), the objective of this paper is first to assess the prospects of cooperation among...

An often heard view is that exchange rate variability will decrease for a country that joins the EMU. This is not necessarily true. Both real and nominal exchange rate variability increase under certain circumstances when asymmetric demand shocks occur inside or outside the union. These results...

Some ten years ago, Michael Dooley (Dooley, 1997; Dooley, 2000) put forwardan insurance model of currency crises, which after some modifications gives a goodtheoretical basis for explanation of the overall dynamics of the post communist transformationand diversity across countries and periods. The...

It is commonplace to link neoclassical economics to 18th- or 19th-century physics and its notion of equilibrium, of a pendulum once disturbed eventually coming to rest. Likewise, an economy subjected to an exogenous shock seeks equilibrium through the stabilizing market forces unleashed by the...

This paper discusses two pertinent policy issues dealing with the global liquidity crisis - global prudential regulation reform, and reassessment of using international reserves in the crisis. We point out the paradox of prudential regulations while the identity of economic actors that benefited...

This paper discusses two pertinent policy issues dealing with the global liquidity crisis - global prudential regulation reform, and reassessment of using international reserves in the crisis. We point out the paradox of prudential regulations - while the identity of economic actors that...

Did adoption of the gold standard exacerbate or diminish macroeconomic volatility? Supporters thought so, critics thought not, and theory offers ambiguous messages. A hard exchange-rate regime such as the gold standard might limit monetary shocks if it ties the hands of policy makers. But any...

Following an analysis of the forces behind the global capital flows paradox" observed in the era of advancing financial globalization, this paper sets out to investigate the opportunity costs of self-insurance through precautionary reserve holdings. We reject the idea of reserves as low-cost...