TY  - JOUR
AU  - Obstfeld, Maurice
TI  - The International Monetary System: Living with Asymmetry
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17641
PY  - 2011
Y2  - December 2011
DO  - 10.3386/w17641
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17641
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17641.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Maurice Obstfeld
Department of Economics
University of California, Berkeley
530 Evans Hall #3880
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Tel: 510/643-9646
E-Mail: obstfeld@econ.berkeley.edu
M1  - published as Maurice Obstfeld. "The International Monetary System: Living with Asymmetry," in Robert C. Feenstra and Alan M. Taylor, editors, "Globalization in an Age of Crisis: Multilateral Economic Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century" University of Chicago Press (2014)

M3  - presented at "Globalization in an Age of Crisis", September 14-16, 2011
AB  - 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.
ER  -