The Behavior of the Real Exchange Rate Under Fixed and Floating Exchange Rate Regimes

This article investigates the behavior of real exchange rates under fixed and flexible exchange rates. Using data from both the Bretton Woods and the modern floating periods, we decompose real exchange rate movements into components attributable to supply shocks, real demand shocks, monetary shocks, capital flows shocks, and real oil price shocks. Empirical results show that real demand shocks are an important source of real exchange rate movements under both fixed and flexible rates, while monetary shocks are negligible. Supply and oil price shocks seem to be more important under Bretton Woods, while capital flows shocks seem to explain a relatively higher proportion of real exchange rate movements under the modern floating period.     

Inflation under the Bretton Woods system: The spillover effects of U.S. expansionary policies

This paper examines the transmission effects of U.S. expansionary policies on inflation in the G7 countries under the latter years of the Bretton Woods system. Using quarterly data and structural vector autoregressions, this paper investigates the extent of inflation variability due to U.S. aggregate supply and aggregate demand impulses in major industrial countries. Empirical results show that a sizable proportion of inflation variability in these countries can be attributed to U.S. shocks. A brief discussion follows concerning the breakdown of Bretton Woods and implications for the design and functioning of international monetary arrangements.     

国际货币体系改革与人民币国际化

布雷顿森林制度的解体加剧了国际金融市场的动荡 ,亚洲金融危机的爆发和蔓延进一步暴露出现有国际货币体系的缺陷 ,欧元面世催生国际货币新体系。本文立足于国际货币三元化发展的趋势 ,分析了目前制约人民币国际化的基本因素 ,并提出推动人民币国际化的重点在于实现人民币区域     

International monetary issues and the developing countries: a survey

This review of the academic and official literature relating to international monetary issues and the developing countries concentrates on three matters: the appropriateness of conventional fiscal, monetary and exchange-rate measures for balance-of-payments adjustment in developing countries; the need of developing countries for international liquidity and the adequacy of supply to them; and the monetary legitimacy and technique of linking international liquidity creation and development aid. It describes the opportunity which the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, and the subsequent establishment of the Committee of Twenty, have provided for developing countries to have a voice in international monetary affairs; and it indicates a number of areas for further research and study at the policy level.     

Canada and the IMF: Trailblazer or Prodigal Son?

Canada played an important role in the establishment of the IMF, yet in 1950 it was also the first major member to abandon the Bretton Woods par-value system in favour of a flexible exchange rate. Canada’s trail-blazing experience demonstrated that a flexible exchange rate can operate in stable and effective manner under a high degree of capital mobility. Equally important, it showed that monetary policy needs to be conducted differently under a flexible exchange rate and capital mobility. In 1962, Canada returned to the Bretton Woods system as a “prodigal son”, after a period of controversial monetary policy. This paper critically analyzes the interaction between Canadian and IMF officials regarding Canada’s exchange rate policy in view of the economic circumstances and the prevailing wisdom at the time. It also examines the impact on IMF research and policy because the Canadian experience influenced the work of Robert Mundell and Marcus Fleming, resulting in the development of the Mundell-Fleming model. Thus, the Canadian floating rate experience not only had important implications for the IMF and the Bretton Woods system, but also for macroeconomic theory and policy in open economies.     

复活的布雷顿森林体系:国际争论与现实冲击

Dooley等人用"复活的布雷顿森林体系"(BWⅡ)框架解释全球国际收支失衡并预测这种模式未来还将持续,该学说在国际经济学界引起广泛关注。在对相关理论争议进行梳理的基础上,本文着重考察了2005年以来国际经济金融领域的最新变化对BWⅡ稳定性的影响。分析表明,中国等新兴经济体的汇率体制变化、美元的持续贬值、2007年部分国家初现端倪的储备多元化趋势等增强了BWⅡ的不稳定性,单一货币主导的国际货币体系格局很难持续。     

Downhill from devaluation: The battle for sterling, 1968–721

The devaluation of 1967 and the float of 1972 have become two of the key cornerstones in the analysis of sterling under the Bretton Woods system. Sterling’s fortunes between 1968 and 1972 have not been so well documented. This article uncovers new evidence about the pound for this period, including the British government’s contingency plans for blocking the sterling balances as a means to negate the weakness of sterling following the 1967 devaluation, the discussions with the United States on the reform of the international monetary system, and the preparations made for floating the pound.     

Why clashes between internal and external stability goals end in currency crises, 1797–1994

We argue that recent currency crises reflect clashes between fundamentals and pegged exchange rates, just as did crises in the past. We reject the view that crises reflect self-fulfilling prophecies that are not closely related to measured fundamentals. Doubts about the timing of a market attack on a currency are less important than the fact that it is bound to happen if a government's policies are inconsistent with pegged exchange rates. We base these conclusions on a review of currency crises in the historical record under metallic monetary regimes and of crises post-World War II under Bretton Woods, and since, in European and Latin American pegged exchange rate regimes.     

The Imbalances of the Bretton Woods System 1965 to 1973: U.S. Inflation,the Elephant in the Room

Open Economies Review - This paper argues that the key deep underlying fundamental for the growing international imbalances leading to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system between 1971 and 1973...     

An Interpretation of the Collapsing Process of the Bretton Woods System

This paper attempts to determine the environments that market confidence might play a significant role in the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. We build a game-theoretic model of currency crises where a continuum of small speculators can decide their market confidence and trading positions. In the model, the convertibility of dollar is assumed to exhibit a long-term downtrend due to Triffin’s dilemma. The problem is analyzed on the grounds of both certainty and uncertainty. In the certainty case, we find that if the convertibility of dollar is low enough, a dollar crisis is inevitable, but if the convertibility is in an intermediate range with multiple equilibria, the Bretton Woods system is vulnerable to self-fulfilling speculation. In the uncertainty case, the incidence of the confidence crises will disproportionately increase as the convertibility of dollar falls. Lastly, this paper shows that the Federal Reserve Bank’s secrecy may extend the maximum lifespan of the Bretton Woods system.     

The relationship between the monetary regime and output volatility: a multivariate GARCH-M model of the Japanese experience, 1919–1996

In this paper we tried to determine whether or not adherence to a floating exchange rate regime helped the Japanese economy to absorb shocks which originated from domestic and foreign sources based on the Japanese experience from the interwar to the post Bretton Woods floating exchange rate period. Using a multivariate GARCH-M model, we analyzed the relation of exchange rate volatility and output volatility directly. The results imply that the floating exchange rate regime has helped the Japanese economy to insulate itself from foreign shocks. The estimated coefficient which represents the response to the foreign shocks decreases and the decrease is significant in the floating exchange rate regime.     

Enhanced Special Drawing Rights: How China Could Contribute to a Reformed International Monetary Architecture

Since the end of the Bretton Woods era, the world has operated on a de facto system of free‐floating exchange rates, with the US dollar as the dominant international currency. The system, characterized by large pro‐cyclical capital flows and chronic imbalances, is inherently unstable, and has contributed to repeated crises, recessions and geopolitical tensions. One potentially “least‐difficult” line of reform would be to allow the evolution of a multi‐currency system, underpinned by an expanded role for Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). Attempts to promote wider use of the SDR have foundered on the liquidity premium. However, for Chinese corporations and institutions, at present restricted in their capital account activities, the SDR liquidity premium would appear less daunting. The Chinese authorities could provide policy encouragement for the use of SDRs by their institutions. This initiative, supported by China's Special Administrative Region Hong Kong, would kick‐start an international SDR ecosystem, and encourage even broader use of SDRs, to the benefit of international monetary stability.     

国际银行业统一监管体系的发展与完善

布雷顿森林体系解体以来,银行业发展迅速,机构跨国化,业务多样化以及创新工具不断涌现,金融危机频发,急需一个有效的国际统一监管体系。巴塞尔委员会自1975年成立以来,对国际银行统一监管发挥了重要作用,文章就巴塞尔协议这35年以来的发展趋势进行了研究,并试图找出新协议的缺陷和仍需继续改进的地方,提出进一步完善的重点。     

亚洲四国汇率风险与贸易--远期外汇市场的作用

本文基于对上世纪90年代至2005年的四个亚洲国家与美国间双边出口贸易数据的实证结果比较，采用VAR方法证明了存在一个成熟有效的远期外汇市场可以帮助出口企业规避汇率风险。最后，引用泰国案例，实证说明为了确保远期外汇市场能够提供准确的汇率价格信号，政府不应过度干预该市场。     

A note on stabilization and the World Bank

Balance-of-payments support has long been regarded as requiring only short-term or medium-term financing. It is not generally realized that the original intention at the time of Bretton Woods was that since balance-of-payments problems sometimes call for long-term financing, the World Bank should be empowered to provide such financing. The Bank's clear authority in this regard was allowed to atrophy, with the result that a major gap opened up in the operating functions of the Bretton Woods institutions.     

Implications of the effective revaluation of reserve asset gold: The case for a gold account for development

International agreement was reached in the early 1970s that the future creation of international reserves would be largely via SDR allocations, to be distributed to individual countries in proportion to their quotas in the IMF. In this manner, the international monetary system would play a ‘neutral’ role in the creation and distribution of international reserves. It has become increasingly apparent in recent years, however, that the international monetary system has been far from neutral in its distribution of international liquidity. The de facto revaluation of reserve asset gold has led to a massive creation of international reserves — nearly $500 billion by the end of 1979 — which has served to benefit almost exclusively the major gold-holding countries, all among the wealthiest of the industrialized nations.Unlike the major gold-holding countries, which throughout the Bretton Woods era converted two-thirds of their foreign exchange holdings into gold, the large majority of developing countries acted on the basis of the United States pledge that the dollar was ‘as good as gold’. As a result, the quantitative analysis presented in this paper shows that developing countries have foregone reserve holdings in excess of $100 billion. To partially redress the inequitable distribution of international reserves which has arisen from the de facto revaluation of reserve asset gold — and at the same time to promote a significant transfer of resources to developing countries — this paper proposes the establishment of a ‘Gold Account for Development’ based on official gold holdings, outlines the various forms which such an account might take, and discusses the political acceptability of the proposals.     

The International Transmission of Monetary Policy in a Dollar Pricing Model

This paper analyses the international transmission of monetary policy in the case where all export prices are set in US dollars. “Dollar pricing” implies that the international effects of US monetary shocks are different from those of European shocks because of an asymmetric exchange rate pass-through to import prices. A dollar pricing model can explain the observed asymmetry in the transmission of monetary policy: US monetary policy affects US output more than European monetary policy affects European output. I also show that the current account is an important channel through which monetary policy affects welfare. The paper concludes that under dollar pricing a monetary expansion is a beggar-thy-neighbour policy.     

Losing autonomy: the Norwegian central bank during the Second World War

In the mid‐twentieth century a number of central banks around the western world lost their operational autonomy and were placed under government control. The origin of these policy changes can be traced to the intellectual and political developments of the interwar era in addition to the introduction of the Bretton Woods monetary system. The Norwegian central bank offers a particularly stark example of this phenomenon: experiencing a rapid decline from its high level of autonomy in the interwar years, to a clear subordination to the government after 1945. Through an analysis of the correspondence between the main policy makers in the exiled Norwegian government and central bank management, this article contributes to the understanding of central bank autonomy by tracing the decisive factors that led to the Norwegian central bank's loss of agency.     

The macroeconomic effects of monetary policy: Evidence from Japan

This study examines the macroeconomic effects of monetary policy in Japan. We apply the new identification strategy proposed by Bu et al. (2021) to the Japanese case and estimate monetary policy shocks that bridge periods of conventional and unconventional monetary policymaking. We show the macroeconomic effects of monetary policy; a contractionary monetary policy shock significantly decreases output and inflation rates even under the effective lower bound. However, because the shorter-term and longer-term nominal interest rates are already close to zero, the magnitude of monetary policy shocks on the macroeconomic variables is modest.     

Has International Financial Integration Increased?

This paper compares the behavior of real interest rate differentials across the major countries under the Bretton Woods regime and the regime of floating exchanges that replaced it. The primary object is to investigate both the extent of market integration and its changes over time. For all fifteen possible country pairs real interest differentials are mean reverting, and in two-thirds of these cases indistinguishable from zero statistically. For all country pairs on average and for most such pairs individually, moreover, the estimated differentials are not appreciably different in absolute value than the differentials that we estimate for various money-market rates within the United States. Additional evidence points to a narrowing of differentials under floating rates over time and an increase in speeds of convergence.