This paper examines the problems in establishing currency convertibility- and the optimal timing- in formerly planned economies making the transition to market-oriented systems.

China has been stockpiling international reserves at an extremely rapid pace since the late 1990s and has surpassed Japan to become the largest reserve holder in the world. This paper undertakes an empirical investigation to assess the extent of de facto sterilization and capital mobility using...

India's foreign exchange reserves have risen rapidly since the balance-of-payment crisis in 1991 to over US$155 billion by mid-2006. India is now the fifth largest Asian reserve holder. Despite this, scant attention has been paid to the rationale for and impact of reserves accumulation in India....

This paper addresses the important question of how far a government will run down its stock of foreign reserves in a defense of a fixed exchange rate. An optimizing model of currency crisis is presented in which the decision of whether or not to borrow in a defense of a peg is explicitly...

Could a high-access, quick-disbursing "insurance facility" in the IMF help to reduce the incidence of sharp interruptions in capital flows ("sudden stops")? We contribute to the debate around this question by analyzing the impact of conventional IMF-supported programs on the incidence of sudden...

This paper studies the implications of foreign currency deposits (FCDs) for international liquidity shortages in Pakistan. The analysis focuses on how the large volume of FCDs and the specific institutional characteristics of those deposits have made the Pakistan economy highly vulnerable to...

In recent years, the South Caucasus and Central Asia countries (CCA-6) have received significant foreign exchange inflows. While a healthy reserve buffer is desirable to selfinsure against external crises, holding international reserves also involves costs. We analyze the adequacy of CCA-6...

This paper reviews and discusses issues involved in assessing the relationship between capital account liberalization and economic performance. First, it discusses the different measures of restrictions used in the literature. Second, it reviews the literature on the relationship between growth...