Product Description: This book addresses the growing debate over proposals for international monetary reform and the tentative attempts, for example at the Louvre and Plaza accords, to achieve greater coordination of macroeconomic policies.The first section draws lessons from the experience of the interwar Gold Standard, the Bretton Woods system, and the EMS...read more

The implications of capital mobility for growth and stability are some of the most contentious and least understood contemporary issues in economics. In this book, Barry Eichengreen discusses historical, theoretical, empirical, and policy aspects of the effects, both positive and negative, of capital flows. He focuses on the connections between capital flows and crises as well as on those between capital flows and growth. Eichengreen argues that international financial liberalization, like other forms of economic liberalization, can positively affect the efficiency of resource allocation and the rate of economic growth. But analyses of both recent and historical experience also show an undeniable association between capital mobility and crises, especially when domestic institutions are weak and the harmonization of capital account liberalization and other policy reforms is inadequate. In his conclusion, Eichengreen makes suggestions for policy design to maximize the benefits of international financial liberalization while minimizing the risks of financial instability.

Product Description: The Mexican Crisis of 1994/5 came as a rude surprise to the international policy-making community. It revealed serious confusion over how markets, governments, and multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund should deal with financial crises in heavily-indebted developing economies...read more

Product Description: This volume provides a new interpretation of the operation and macroeconomic repercussions of the international monetary system during the interwar years. Each of the eleven essays is explicitly concerned with the role of exchange rates in macroeconomic fluctuations from the American and European perspective...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The process of European monetary unification (EMU) is approaching a critical juncture. At the beginning of 1998 the member states of the European Union will decide whether or not to go ahead with their monetary union and determine which countries qualify as members...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This book reassesses Western Europe's miraculous economic recovery from World War II and the crisis of 1947. The contributors expose the role of international institutions and contrast the very different national experiences. Their historical analysis has policy relevance--to the debate over the Maastricht Treaty and the Single Market Programme, to the difficulties of adjustment in formerly centrally planned economies, and to reform of the Bretton Woods institutions...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In this book, a leading observer of the international financial system assesses official efforts to address the problem of financial crises in emerging markets. Professor Eichengreen describes the progress that has been made in limiting the frequency of crises and strengthening the international financial system...read more

Product Description: As European integration has deepened and become more invasive, the tension between the authority of the European Union and the autonomy of member states has increased, while dissatisfaction with the political institutions of the European Union has increased dramatically...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

(view table of contents)

The importance of the international monetary system is clearly evident in daily news stories about fluctuating currencies and in dramatic events such as the recent reversals in the Mexican economy. It has become increasingly apparent that one cannot understand the international economy without knowing how its monetary system operates. Now Barry Eichengreen presents a brief, lucid book that tells the story of the international financial system over the past 150 years. Globalizing Capital is intended not only for economists but also for a general audience of historians, political scientists, professionals in government and business, and anyone with a broad interest in international economic and political relations. Eichengreen's work demonstrates that insights into the international monetary system and effective principles for governing it can result only if it is seen a historical phenomenon extending from the gold standard period to interwar instability, then to Bretton Woods, and finally to the post-1973 period of fluctuating currencies. Eichengreen analyzes the shift from pegged to floating exchange rates in the 1970s and ascribes that change to the growing capital mobility that has made pegged rates difficult to maintain. However, he shows that capital mobility was also high prior to World War I, yet this did not prevent the maintenance of fixed exchange rates. What was critical for the successful maintenance of fixed exchange rates during that period was the fact that governments were relatively insulated from democratic politics and thus from pressure to trade off exchange rate stability for other goals, such as the reduction of unemployment. Today pegging exchange rates would require very radical reforms of a sort that governments are understandably reluctant to embrace. The implication seems undeniable: floating rates are here to stay. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This anatomy of financial crises shows that the worldwide debt crisis of the 1980s was not unprecedented and was even forecast by many. Eichengreen and Lindert bring together original studies that assess the historical record to see what lessons can be learned for resolving today's crisis...read more

Product Description: Recent events have reignited the debate over the future of the international monetary system. This book, part of the Integrating National Economic series, examines international monetary options of the twenty-first century. Barry Eichengreen argues that it will not be possible for governments to prevent exchange rates from exceeding prespecified limits...read more

Product Description: As the European Community moves toward full integration of its members' economies, one of the most far-reaching changes will be in the European labor market. Nontariff barriers to trade between the member countries will be removed, and workers will become free to seek employment anywhere in the Community...read more