In July 1944, representatives of the Allied nations gathered in BrettonWoods, New Hampshire and signed an agreement to rebuild the internationalmonetary system. From 1946 until August 15, 1971, major currencies were fixed tothe US dollar, and the dollar was, at the same time, convertible to gold...

This Article, a sequel to earlier articles by the author on financial regulation and global finance, retrieves and updates J. M. Keynes’s original International Clearing Union plan for what ultimately became the International Monetary Fund (“IMF,” “Fund”).  Its motives are not...

We present a simple model that can account for the main features of recent financial crises in emerging markets. The international illiquidity of the domestic financial system is at the center of the problem. Illiquid banks are a necessary and a sufficient condition for financial crises to...

A country's financial system is internationally illiquid if its potential short-term obligations in foreign currency exceed the amount of foreign currency it can have access to in short notice. This condition may be necessary and sufficient for financial crises and/or exchange rate collapses...

Until recently, the trend in world capital markets has been toward increasing "globalization." Recent events in Latin America and Asia have forced a rethinking of the desirability of unrestricted world capital flows. In this paper we ask whether simple restrictions on capital mobility can...