Although the United States and the European Union were both seriously impacted by the financial crisis of 2007, resulting policy debates and regulatory responses have differed considerably on the two sides of the Atlantic. In this paper the authors examine the debates on the problem posed by...

The global financial crisis presents an opportunity--for the first time in many years--for wholesale reform of the international financial and monetary system. The root causes of the crisis, says Goldstein, can be found in both the financial and monetary spheres and so reforms must be prescribed...

Over the past five years China has emerged as the world's largest global surplus economy; indeed by 2007-08 the size of its surplus relative to its GDP was of a magnitude unprecedented for a large trading economy. This development is especially surprising since in the first twenty-five years of...

This study presents the case for an international banking standard (IBS) to deal with the rash of banking crises in developing countries. Over the past 15 years, almost three-fourths of the IMF's member countries have experienced at least one serious bout of banking problems; there have been at...

More than two and a half years have passed since China announced a number of changes to its foreign exchange regime in July 2005. During this period, the debate on the pros and cons of China's exchange rate policy, which had begun in earnest several years earlier, intensified. This important new...

The financial crisis in Mexico dramatically illustrated once again both the volatile nature of private capital flows to emerging markets and the potential for contagion of disturbances from some borrowers to others. It has also highlighted the policy issues confronted by host and creditor...

In this analysis Morris Goldstein examines currency regime choices for emerging economies that are heavily involved with private capital markets. The author argues that the best regime choice for such economies would be managed floating plus, where "plus" is shorthand for a framework that...

In most of the currency crises of the 1990s, the largest output falls have occurred in those emerging economies with large currency mismatches, a phenomenon that occurs when assets and liabilities are denominated in different currencies such that net worth is sensitive to changes in the exchange...

The European currency crises of 1992-93, the Mexican crisis of 1994-95, and especially the Asian/global crisis of 1997-98, have all contributed to a heightened interest in the early warning signals of financial crises. This pathbreaking study presents a comprehensive battery of empirical tests...

This report contains the findings and recommendations of an independent blue-ribbon commission on the future international financial architecture. The commission was sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, and co-chaired by Peter G. Peterson and Carla A. Hills, with the Institute for...