This paper analyzes portfolio diversification, leverage, and financial contagion. It studies the extent to which basic principles of portfolio diversification explain “contagious selling” of financial assets when there are purely local shocks. The paper demonstrates that the elementary...

This is the final issue for 2006 (Volume 53), and contains another paper in the occasional Special Data Section that seeks to measure financial development in the Middle East and North Africa by utilizing a new database. The issue also contains a comment from Jacques J. Polak on parity reversion...

This paper presents views of Professor Robert Triffin on international liquidity and the role of the IMF. The paper is an exposition of Triffin's diagnosis of present and prospective difficulties in the international financial area and of his prescriptions for dealing with these difficulties. It...

This paper reports the unfinished business of the 1974 Report to the Board of Governors on Reform of the International Monetary System on the question of the Special Drawing Right (SDR) as a basket of currencies. The SDR basket was revised after an initial period of four years and is subject to...

An earlier version of this paper was presented to a conference on the topic “Is the Business Cycle Obsolete?” organized by the Social Science Research Council and held in London, England, on April 3–7, 1967