Written on the 50th anniversary of floating exchange rates, this paper deals with possible alternatives to a unipolar dollar-based system. It considers (1) measures of international currency use; (2) potential challengers to the dollar; (3) network externalities; and (4) the plausibility of gold...

Vaccination rates have a statistically significant downward effect on the Covid-19 death rate across US counties, as of August 12, 2021. Controlling for poverty rates, age, and temperature lowers the magnitude of the estimate a little. Using the Biden-Trump vote in the 2020 election as an...

Holtham and Hughes Hallett, and a number of other authors, have suggested that a printout of all 1,000 cases of coordination considered in Frankel and Rockett (1988) should be made available. They wish to check whether, if coordination is restricted to policy packages that they call 'strong'...

We begin by examining determinants of aggregate foreign exchange reserve holdings by central banks (size of issuing country's economy and financial markets, ability of the currency to hold value, and inertia). But understanding the determination of reserve holdings probably requires going beyond...

This paper develops a new econometric framework to estimate and classify exchange rate regimes. They are classified into four distinct categories: fixed exchange rates, BBC (band, basket and crawl), managed floating, and freely floating. The procedure captures the patterns of exchange rate...

This paper uses the Blanchard (1985) finite horizon model to study how taxes and government spending can be managed to stabilize aggregate demand. It is shown that tax policy cannot stabilize demand in less time than it stabilizes the public debt, but that, if government spending is the...

I describe the challenge of fully integrating securities markets in Europe by integrating the clearing and settlement functionalities. The initial condition is characterized by a multitude of standards, conventions, regulation and laws, which are inconsistent with a barrier-free post-trading...

In recent years, the theory of rules and discretion in monetary policy has fascinated scores of academic economists and policymakers alike. This paper asks whether it can be applied to understand the history of the world monetary system, by focusing on the setup and the experience of the Bretton...

The paper discusses the policy problems of a project aimed at substituting several national currencies with one single currency. While these problems are of general interest, the analysis is motivated by the plan for Economic and Monetary Union among the members of the European Community. The...

This paper studies the fluctuations of foreign exchange reserves under a regime of credibly fixed exchange rates. The paper considers a variety of assumptions on the determinants of money demand and currency substitution