Regional and bilateral liquidity arrangements have gained increasing prominence over the past decades, not least during the recent global financial crisis. This has important consequences for the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a crisis lender and raises questions regarding the...

Generally, trade policies exclude provision for predictability and accountability as transparency measures and facilitates trade consensus that enhance market access, reduce trading costs, and promote cooperation. In analyzing the trajectories on transparency, free trade agreement (FTA), and...

This paper considers the extent to which the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) meets the criteria for a common currency area. NAFTA is compared with the EC, a regional grouping for which initial plans for a monetary union are already in place. Most of the anticipated benefits from a...