The exchange rate is a crucial variable linking a nation's domestic economy to the international market. Thus choice of an exchange rate regime is a central component in the economic policy of developing countries and a key factor affecting economic growth.

Historically, most developing nations have employed strict exchange rate controls and heavy protection of domestic industry-policies now thought to be at odds with sustainable and desirable rates of economic growth. By contrast, many East Asian nations maintained exchange rate regimes designed to achieve an attractive climate for exports and an "outer-oriented" development strategy. The result has been rapid and consistent economic growth over the past few decades.

Changes in Exchange Rates in Rapidly Developing Countries explores the impact of such diverse exchange control regimes in both historical and regional contexts, focusing particular attention on East Asia. This comprehensive, carefully researched volume will surely become a standard reference for scholars and policymakers.

There is no universally accepted definition of a currency crisis, but most would agree that they all involve one key element: investors fleeing a currency en masse out of fear that it might be devalued, in turn fueling the very devaluation they anticipated. Although such crises—the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, the speculations on European currencies in the early 1990s, and the ensuing Mexican, South American, and Asian crises—have played a central role in world affairs and continue to occur at an alarming rate, many questions about their causes and effects remain to be answered. In this wide-ranging volume, some of the best minds in economics focus on the historical and theoretical aspects of currency crises to investigate three fundamental issues: What drives currency crises? How should government behavior be modeled? And what are the actual consequences to the real economy?

Reflecting the latest thinking on the subject, this offering from the NBER will serve as a useful basis for further debate on the theory and practice of speculative attacks, as well as a valuable resource as new crises loom.

In spite of the attention paid exchange rates in recent economic debates on developing countries, relatively few studies have systematically analyzed in detail the various ramifications of exchange rate policy in these countries. In this new volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research, leading economists use rigorous models to tackle various exchange rate issues, while also illuminating policy implications that emerge from their analyses.

The volume, divided into four main sections, addresses: the role of exchange rates in stabilization programs and the adjustment process; the importance of exchange rate policy during liberalization reform in developing countries; exchange rate problems relevant and unique to developing countries, illustrated by case studies; and the problems defining, measuring, and identifying determinants of real exchange rates. Authors of individual papers examine the relation between commercial policies and exchange rates, the role of exchange rate policy in stabilization programs, the effectiveness of devaluations as a policy tool, and the interaction between exchange rate terms of trade an capital flow. This research will not only prove crucial to our understanding of the role of exchange rates in developing countries, but will clearly set the standard for future work in the field.

Founded in 1904, Frankfurt’s Weltkulturen Museum houses a remarkable collection of ethnographic artifacts from Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, with the aims of advancing public education and fostering innovative anthropological research across a wide variety of contemporary artistic practices.

Developed through artistic research in the Weltkulturen Museum’s Weltkulturen Labor research lab, Foreign Exchange raises questions about the relationship between the museum’s educational and scientific aims and global trade. Together, essays by anthropologists, art historians, artists, and curators form an extended conversation around the historical accumulation and commodification of artifacts and, in particular, the representation of the human body in ethnographic photographs. Rounding out the volume are many previously unpublished photographs of works discussed. Contributing authors and artist include Peggy Buth, Minerva Cuevas, Gabriel Gbadamosi, David Lau, Tom McCarthy, David Weber-Krebs, and Luke Willis-Thompson.

The previous editions of this work were praised as lucid and insightful introductions to a complicated subject. This third edition incorporates major additions to update the survey while retaining its clarity. Selected from the second edition are essential chapters on developments in balance-of-payments theories, inflation and exchange rates, the international adjustment to the oil price rise, and monetary integration in Europe. In three new chapters, Corden considers the international transmission of economic disturbances, the international macrosystem, and macroeconomic policy coordination.

Since the five largest industrial democracies concluded the Plaza Agreement in 1985, the theory and practice of international economic policy coordination has become the subject of spirited academic and public-policy debate. While some view policy coordination as crucial for the construction of an improved international monetary system, others fear that it risks delaying or weakening the implementation of macroeconomic and structural policies.

In these papers and comments, prominent international economists consider past and present interpretations of the meaning of international policy coordination; conditions necessary for coordination to be beneficial both to the direct participants and the global economy; influential factors for the quantitative impact of coordination; obstacles to coordination; the most—and least—effective methods of coordination; and future directions of the coordination process, including processes associated with greater fixity of exchange rates.

These studies will be readily accessible to policymakers, while offering sophisticated analyses to interested scholars of the global economy.

The foreign exchange market is the largest, fastest-growing financial market in the world. Yet conventional macroeconomic approaches do not explain why people trade foreign exchange. At the same time, they fail to explain the short-run determinants of the exchange rate.

These nine innovative essays use a microstructure approach to analyze the workings of the foreign exchange market, with special emphasis on institutional aspects and the actual behavior of market participants. They examine the volume of transactions, heterogeneity of traders, the time of day and location of trading, the bid-ask spread, and the high level of exchange rate volatility that has puzzled many observers. They also consider the structure of the market, including such issues as nontransparency, asymmetric information, liquidity trading, the use of automated brokers, the relationship between spot and derivative markets, and the importance of systemic risk in the market.

This timely volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in the economics of international finance.

Economists writing on flexible exchange rates in the 1960s foresaw neither the magnitude nor the persistence of the changes in real exchange rates that have occurred in the last fifteen years. Unexpectedly large movements in relative prices have lead to sharp changes in exports and imports, disrupting normal trading relations and causing shifts in employment and output. Many of the largest changes are not equilibrium adjustments to real disturbances but represent instead sustained departures from long-run equilibrium levels, with real exchange rates remaining "misaligned" for years at a time.

Contributors to Misalignment of Exchange Rates address a series of questions about misalignment. Several papers investigate the causes of misalignment and the extent to which observed movements in real exchange rates can be attributed to misalignment. These studies are conducted both empirically, through the experiences of the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and the countries of the European Monetary System, and theoretically, through models of imperfect competition. Attention is then turned to the effects of misalignment, especially on employment and production, and to detailed estimates of the effects of changes in exchange rates on several industries, including the U.S. auto industry. In response to the contention that there is significant "hysteresis" in the adjustment of employment and production to changes in exchange rates, contributors also attempt to determine whether the effects of misalignment can be reversed once exchange rates return to earlier levels. Finally, the issue of how to avoid—or at least control—misalignment through macroeconomic policy is confronted.

At the close of the Second World War, when industrialized nations faced serious trade and financial imbalances, delegates from forty-four countries met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in order to reconstruct the international monetary system. In this volume, three generations of scholars and policy makers, some of whom participated in the 1944 conference, consider how the Bretton Woods System contributed to unprecedented economic stability and rapid growth for 25 years and discuss the problems that plagued the system and led to its eventual collapse in 1971.

The contributors explore adjustment, liquidity, and transmission under the System; the way it affected developing countries; and the role of the International Monetary Fund in maintaining a stable rate. The authors examine the reasons for the System's success and eventual collapse, compare it to subsequent monetary regimes, such as the European Monetary System, and address the possibility of a new fixed exchange rate for today's world.