IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/nbr/nberch/12596.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The International Monetary System: Living with Asymmetry

In: Globalization in an Age of Crisis: Multilateral Economic Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century

Author

Listed:
  • Maurice Obstfeld

Abstract

This paper analyzes current stresses in the two key areas that concerned the architects of the original Bretton Woods system: international liquidity and exchange rate management. Despite radical changes since World War II in the market context for liquidity and exchange rate concerns, they remain central to discussions of international macroeconomic policy coordination. To take two prominent examples of specific (and related) coordination problems, liquidity issues are paramount in strategies of national self-insurance through foreign reserve accumulation, while recent attempts by emerging market economies (EMEs) to limit real currency appreciation have relied heavily on nominal exchange rate management. A central message is that a diverse set of potential asymmetries among sovereign member states provides fertile ground for a variety of coordination failures. The paper goes on to discuss institutions and policies that might mitigate some of these inefficiencies.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Maurice Obstfeld, 2013. "The International Monetary System: Living with Asymmetry," NBER Chapters, in: Globalization in an Age of Crisis: Multilateral Economic Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century, pages 301-336, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:12596
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c12596.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fischer, Stanley, 1999. "Reforming the International Financial System," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(459), pages 557-576, November.
    2. Nicolas E. Magud & Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2018. "Capital Controls: Myth and Reality--A Portfolio Balance Approach," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 19(1), pages 1-47, May.
    3. Patrick McGuire & Goetz von Peter, 2012. "The Dollar Shortage in Global Banking and the International Policy Response," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(2), pages 155-178, June.
    4. Aizenman, Joshua & Sun, Yi, 2012. "The financial crisis and sizable international reserves depletion: From ‘fear of floating’ to the ‘fear of losing international reserves’?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 250-269.
    5. Matteo Maggiori, 2017. "Financial Intermediation, International Risk Sharing, and Reserve Currencies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(10), pages 3038-3071, October.
    6. Mr. Mark R. Stone & W. Christopher Walker & Yosuke Yasui, 2009. "From Lombard Street to Avenida Paulista: Foreign Exchange Liquidity Easing in Brazil in Response to the Global Shock of 2008–09," IMF Working Papers 2009/259, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Stephen G. Hall & George S. Tavlas, 2013. "The Debate About The Revived Bretton-Woods Regime: A Survey And Extension Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(2), pages 340-363, April.
    8. Guillermo A. Calvo & Carmen M. Reinhart, 2002. "Fear of Floating," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(2), pages 379-408.
    9. Linda S. Goldberg & Craig Kennedy & Jason Miu, 2011. "Central bank dollar swap lines and overseas dollar funding costs," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 17(May), pages 3-20.
    10. Jonathan D. Ostry, 2012. "Managing Capital Flows: What Tools to Use?," Asian Development Review (ADR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 29(01), pages 82-88, June.
    11. George Soros, 1999. "The International Financial Crisis," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(2), pages 58-76, March.
    12. Obstfeld,Maurice & Taylor,Alan M., 2005. "Global Capital Markets," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521671798.
    13. Eichengreen, Barry, 2012. "Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199642472.
    14. Edwin M. Truman, 2008. "On What Terms Is the IMF Worth Funding?," Working Paper Series WP08-11, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    15. Lane, Philip R. & Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria, 2007. "The external wealth of nations mark II: Revised and extended estimates of foreign assets and liabilities, 1970-2004," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 223-250, November.
    16. Rose, Andrew K. & Spiegel, Mark M., 2012. "Dollar illiquidity and central bank swap arrangements during the global financial crisis," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 326-340.
    17. Aaron Brown, 2011. "Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System, by Barry Eichengreen," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(6), pages 825-826.
    18. James M Boughton, 2011. "Jacques J. Polak and the Evolution of the International Monetary System," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 59(2), pages 379-399, June.
    19. Claudio Borio & Piti Disyatat, 2011. "Global imbalances and the financial crisis: Link or no link?," BIS Working Papers 346, Bank for International Settlements.
    20. C. Randall Henning, 1994. "Currencies and Politics in the United States, Germany, and Japan," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 15, October.
    21. Patrick McGuire & Goetz von Peter, 2009. "The US dollar shortage in global banking," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, March.
    22. Nicolas Magud & Carmen Reinhart & Kenneth Rogoff, 2005. "Capital Controls: Myth and Reality A Portfolio Balance Approach to Capital Controls," University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers 2006-10, University of Oregon Economics Department.
    23. Spaventa, Luigi & Giavazzi, Francesco, 2010. "Why the current account may matter in a monetary union: Lessons from the financial crisis in the Euro area," CEPR Discussion Papers 8008, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    24. Lane, Philip & Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria, "undated". "External Wealth of Nations," Instructional Stata datasets for econometrics extwealth, Boston College Department of Economics.
    25. Murray C. Kemp, 1962. "Foreign Investment And The National Advantage," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 38(81), pages 56-62, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gopalakrishnan, Balagopal & Mohapatra, Sanket, 2018. "Turning over a golden leaf? Global liquidity and emerging market central banks’ demand for gold after the financial crisis," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 94-109.
    2. Michael D. Bordo & Robert N. McCauley, 2019. "Triffin: Dilemma or Myth?," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 67(4), pages 824-851, December.
    3. Carmen M. Reinhart, 2019. "Financial crises: past and future," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 54(1), pages 3-15, January.
    4. Landau, J.P., 2012. "Policies on sovereign debt," Financial Stability Review, Banque de France, issue 16, pages 191-201, April.
    5. Maurice Obstfeld & Alan M. Taylor, 2017. "International Monetary Relations: Taking Finance Seriously," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 3-28, Summer.
    6. George Pantelopoulos, 2021. "Exogenous and endogenous sterilisation under managed exchange rates," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 756-779, September.
    7. Sebastián Fanelli & Ludwig Straub, 2021. "A Theory of Foreign Exchange Interventions [The Cost of Foreign Exchange Intervention: Concepts and Measurement]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(6), pages 2857-2885.
    8. Michel Aglietta & Virginie Coudert, 2019. "The dollar and the Transition to Sustainable Development: From Key Currency to Multilateralism," CEPII Policy Brief 2019-26, CEPII research center.
    9. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Hélène Rey & Maxime Sauzet, 2019. "The International Monetary and Financial System," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 859-893, August.
    10. Philip R. Lane, 2013. "Growth And Adjustment Challenges For The Euro Area," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 44(2), pages 273-295.
    11. Mikhail V. Zharikov, 2022. "The Model of a Shared Interest Rate for a Group of Countries to Circulate a Digital Currency: Featuring the BRICS," Journal of Central Banking Theory and Practice, Central bank of Montenegro, vol. 11(2), pages 187-208.
    12. Jeremy Srouji, 2021. "Why is World Money World Money? A View from the Functions of Money," GREDEG Working Papers 2021-44, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    13. Alan M. Taylor, 2012. "Global Financial Stability and the Lessons of History: A Review of Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff's This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1092-1105, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maurice Obstfeld, 2012. "Does the Current Account Still Matter?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 1-23, May.
    2. Maurice Obstfeld, 2011. "International Liquidity: The Fiscal Dimension," IMES Discussion Paper Series 11-E-22, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    3. Philip Lane, 2013. "Financial Globalisation and the Crisis," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 555-580, July.
    4. Eswar S. Prasad, 2011. "Role reversal in global finance," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 339-390.
    5. Edd Denbee & Carsten Jung & Francesco Patern�, 2016. "Stitching together the global financial safety net," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 322, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    6. Philip R. Lane, 2013. "Cross-Border Financial Integration in Asia and the Macro-Financial Policy Framework," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 14(2), pages 37-52, April.
    7. Chen, William & Phelan, Gregory, 2021. "International coordination of macroprudential policies with capital flows and financial asymmetries," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    8. Ma, Guonan & McCauley, Robert N., 2013. "Is China or India more financially open?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 6-27.
    9. Al-Saffar, Yaser & Ridinger, Wolfgang & Whitaker, Simon, 2015. "Financial Stability Paper No 24: The role of external balance sheets in the financial crisis," Bank of England Financial Stability Papers 24, Bank of England.
    10. D. Essers & E. Vincent, 2017. "The global financial safety net :In need of repair ?," Economic Review, National Bank of Belgium, issue ii, pages 87-112, september.
    11. Obstfeld, Maurice, 2012. "Financial flows, financial crises, and global imbalances," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 469-480.
    12. Wenwen Sheng & M. C. Sunny Wong, 2017. "Capital Flow Management Policies and Riskiness of External Liability Structures: the Role of Local Financial Markets," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 461-498, July.
    13. Sebastián Fanelli & Ludwig Straub, 2021. "A Theory of Foreign Exchange Interventions [The Cost of Foreign Exchange Intervention: Concepts and Measurement]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(6), pages 2857-2885.
    14. Pasricha, Gurnain Kaur & Falagiarda, Matteo & Bijsterbosch, Martin & Aizenman, Joshua, 2018. "Domestic and multilateral effects of capital controls in emerging markets," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 48-58.
    15. Mahvash S. Qureshi & Jonathan D. Ostry & Atish R. Ghosh & Marcos Chamon, 2011. "Managing Capital Inflows: The Role of Capital Controls and Prudential Policies," NBER Working Papers 17363, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Hyun Song Shin, 2014. "Adapting Macroprudential Policies to Global Liquidity Conditions," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Miguel Fuentes D. & Claudio E. Raddatz & Carmen M. Reinhart (ed.),Capital Mobility and Monetary Policy, edition 1, volume 18, chapter 2, pages 25-67, Central Bank of Chile.
    17. Stefan Angrick, 2018. "Structural conditions for currency internationalization: international finance and the survival constraint," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(5), pages 699-725, September.
    18. Daniela Magalhães Prates & Luiz Fernando De Paula, 2016. "Financial Flows To Emerging Economies And Policy Alternatives In Post-2008," Anais do XLIII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 43rd Brazilian Economics Meeting] 117, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    19. Carmen M. Reinhart & M. Belen Sbrancia1, 2015. "The liquidation of government debt," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 30(82), pages 291-333.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F32 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Current Account Adjustment; Short-term Capital Movements
    • F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions
    • F36 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Financial Aspects of Economic Integration
    • F42 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - International Policy Coordination and Transmission
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:12596. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.