The growing integration of capital markets has strengthened incentives for greater international coordination of economic and financial policies. Structural changes in these financial market, however, may have undermined the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy and complicated market...

Evidence from the past three years indicates that the exchange rate between the private ECU and the official ECU Basket can deviate substantially from par. The value of the private ECU is driven by expectations that a future European Central Bank will enforce par convertibility between the...

Properly designed wholesale payments system can make a significant contribution to enhancing market discipline in the financial sector, reducing the risk of systemic disturbance and permitting a less extensive safety net for financial institutions. The objective of these reforms has been to...

This paper reviews the ongoing efforts to reduce the risks inherent in the world’s principal wholesale payment systems. The paper assesses the major policy proposals to contain the growth in intraday credit exposures that arises in net settlement wholesale payment systems and in the real-time...

Hedge funds are collective investment vehicles, often organized as private partnerships and resident offshore for tax and regulatory purposes. Their legal status places few restrictions on their portfolios and transactions, leaving their managers free to use short sales, derivative securities,...

This paper provides a description and analysis of recent developments in international capital markets and an assessment of the prospects for private financing flows.

This study addresses major policy issues associated with the future of the international monetary system. It focuses on whether there is a need for fundamental reform of this system, defined as systematic and sustained effort on the part of the three major industrial countries (United States,...

This paper examines how a country’s exchange rate policy should be adjusted when the degree of integration between domestic and external financial markets increases as a result of both domestic financial liberalization and the relaxation of capital controls. As the financial structure is...

Each episode of volatility in financial markets heightens the attention of government officials and others to the role played by the hedge fund industry in financial market dynamics. Hedge funds were implicated in the 1992 crises that led to major exchange rate realignments in the European...