The role of the yen in the international financial system is reconsidered from a comparative (historical) approach. Compared with the D-Mark in the postwar years, the limited use of the yen results not so much from regulations on capital movements as from the structure and behavior of Japanese...

This paper formalizes Irving Fisher`s century-old model of bimetallism and adds the important quot;disequilibriumquot; dynamics to deal with the long periods during which bimetallic countries were on effective monometallic standards. It resolves a long standing puzzle in the bimetallic...

The International Monetary Fund was designed during World War II by men whose worldview had been shaped by the Great War and the Great Depression. Their views on how the postwar international monetary system should function were also shaped by their economics training and their nationalities....

We use the demise of silver-based standards in the 19th century to explore price dynamics when a commodity-based money ceases to function as a global unit of account. We develop a general equilibrium model of the global economy with gold and silver money. Calibration of the model shows that...

China's exchange rate regime has undergone gradual reform since the move away from a fixed exchange rate in 2005. The renminbi has become more flexible over time but is still carefully managed, and depth and liquidity in the onshore FX market is relatively low compared to other countries with de...

In this paper, I combine long multi-country time series data for interest rates and stock returns with the institutional evidence for much earlier centuries amassed by economic historians to study the question of financial globalization and how it has altered since the late classical era. At...

This paper argues that the current financial crisis offers the best opportunity for progressive reform in international financial governance in many years. It cautions that developing countries and civil society will only be able to fully exploit this opportunity if they are well prepared and...

The 2008 global financial crisis raised the expectations for the International Monetary Fund (IMF/the Fund) and instigated a call for a New Bretton Woods. In this paper, I review the Bretton Woods monetary system and the role of the IMF to suggest new insights into its role in the postwar...

This paper forms part of a series of nine studies on the role of the European Union in international economic fora, prepared by Policy Department A at the request of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament. It provides factual background information about the...

Rethinking Regulation of International Finance encapsulates the most important aspects of the development and operation of the international financial system. This book questions the fundamental basis of the existing international financial architecture (soft law) and explores the need for a...