The dollar rose by about 35 percent in real terms from 1995 through the end of 2001, supporting the booming US economy of the late 1990s but pushing the current account deficit to a record high of almost 5 percent of GDP. This special report provides alternative views of how large a dollar...

Building on the scholarship of the highly successful 2003 volume, Dollar Overvaluation and the World Economy, this book assesses the progress that has been made to date in correcting the sizable misalignments of key national currencies that developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The book...

If the foreign exchange market behaved as it is assumed to do in economics textbooks, with ubiquitous rational expectations the driving force, it is indeed difficult to imagine why anyone would not want to allow the exchange rate to float (at least for countries that do not satisfy the...

Many of the discussions on a new international financial architecture that were spawned by the east Asian crisis have dealt with the future role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This policy brief starts by summarizing the recommendations of five recent reports and one speech, and the...

Until the IMF package on August 7, the financial markets showed great concern that Brazil might follow Russia, Ecuador, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, and Argentina in defaulting on its public debt. The yield spread of Brazilian debt over US Treasury securities ("Brazil risk") rose above...

The macroeconomic regime implanted in Brazil during the second administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and largely maintained by his successor, is typical of those of the advanced countries. The anchor is provided by an inflation-targeting regime (with a target inflation rate somewhat...

This book comprises the Lionel Robbins lectures delivered at LSE in 1992. Since Pedro Aspe was at that time some two-thirds of the way through his term as Mexico’s Finance Minister, it provides an account of what he thought he was doing and what he was hoping to achieve, without the benefit of...

The frequency of financial crises over recent decades makes an in-depth study of the phenomenon imperative. This should involve particular attention to those points the different crises have in common, so as to draw lessons that can be used by financial authorities, regulators and the actual...