The provision of liquidity by international institutions such as the IMF to countries experiencing balance of payment problems could prevent liquidity runs but could also cause moral hazard distortions: expecting to be bailed out by the IMF, debtor countries would have weak incentives to...

In the event of third generation crisis, international lending of last resort should be used if and only if the ILLOR is informed on the subject of financial and banking domestic markets. Therefore, if will act at a macroeconomic level, as a usual ILLOR, but also at a microeconomic level, since...

The recent financial crisis proved that pre-existing arrangements for the governance of global markets were flawed. With reform underway in the USA, the EU and Internationally, this book explores most of the questions associated with building an effective governance system and analyses the...

The Global Financial Crisis has shown that the international financial system is vulnerable to breakdown. The financial trilemma demonstrates that financial stability, international banking and national financial supervision cannot be combined. National supervisors force international banks to...

Official holdings of US dollar reserves are partly invested outside the United States. These offshore investments do not strictly speaking finance the US current account, but do support the US dollar. Offshore holdings grow fast when intervention is large

This paper examines the role of IMF-supported programs in crisis prevention; specifically, whether, conditional on an episode of intense market pressures, IMF financial support helps prevent a capital account crisis from developing and, if so, through what channels. In doing so, the paper...

This paper explores the welfare effects of the seniority requirement of the international lender of the last resort (ILLR). An ILLR with seniority decreases the interest burden of the country because ILLR accepts a lower interest rate due to the higher chance of getting repaid. On the other...

The development of the European Monetary Union is related to Milton Friedman's critique of the Bretton Woods System that started a vigorous debate about “fixed versus flexible exchange rates.” This paper contrasts briefly the arguments pro and con flexible exchange rates at this time. After...

Starting with the framework of New Institutional Economics, this Comment examines the institutional arrangements of Chinese and U.S. governance, and then scrutinizes their respective policy responses to the financial collapse of 2008. The latent thesis is that, notwithstanding differences in...

During the 1990s, the concept of catalytic official finance (COF) gained prominence in policy debates. The concept revolves around the idea that the propensity of investors to lend to a country increases when the IMF provides its seal of approval - backed up by only limited official financing -...