It appears likely that the number of currencies in the world, having proliferated along with the number of countries over the past 50 years, will decline sharply over the next two decades. The question I plan to pose here is: where, from an economic point of view, should we aim for this process to stop? Should there be a single world currency, as Richard Cooper (1984) boldly envisioned? Should ...

Currency crises tend to affect countries in geographic proximity. This suggests that regional patterns of international trade are important in understanding how currency crises spread, above and beyond any macroeconomic phenomena. Using data for five different currency crises (in 1971, 1973, 1992, 1994, and 1997) we show that currency crises affect countries tied together by international trade...

Executive Summary Currency crises tend to be regional. Since macroeconomic and financial phenomena are not regional, these phenomena are unimportant in understanding why crises spread. But international trade is regional, as countries tend to trade with their neighbors. This suggests that trade links are important in understanding how currency crises spread, above and beyond any macroeconomic p...

The paper compares the credibility of currency boards and (standard) pegs. Abandoning a currency board requires a time-consuming legislative process and an abolition will thus be previously expected. Therefore, a currency board solves the time inconsistency problem of monetary policy. However, policy can react to unexpected shocks only with a time lag, thus the threat of large shocks makes the ...

Currency crises tend to be regional; they affect countries in geographic proximity. This suggests that patterns of international trade are important in understanding how currency crises spread, above and beyond any macroeconomic phenomena. We provide empirical support for this hypothesis. Using data for five different currency crises (in 1971, 1973, 1992, 1994, and 1997) we show that currency c...

The adverse effect of currency volatility on international trade has prompted the inception of the European Monetary System (EMS) and other measures of international policy coordination aimed at reducing intracurrency variability. Until "Black Wednesday" in September 1992 the EMS had some sucess in this objective, but following pressure on the Italian Lira, other ERM currencies (viz. Sterling, ...

This paper investigates whether the Federal Reserve might lower its currency processing costs by reallocating high-speed currency sorting volume among its processing sites. Although scale economy estimates from Bauer, Bohn, and Hancock (1998) suggests that consolidation might permit some processing cost savings, it can be very expensive to ship currency due to security and insurance requirement...

Significant time-varying risk premia exist in the foreign currency futures basis, and these risk premia are meaningfully correlated with common macroeconomic risk factors from equity and bond markets. The stock index dividend yield and the bond default and term spreads in the U.S. markets help forecast the risk premium component of the foreign currency futures basis. The specific source of risk...

In this paper, we study predictability of exchange rates and explore determinants of its dynamics over time. We model the admissible amount of predictability in two ways, each corresponding in a stylized manner to a broad class of rational currency pricing models, namely those under which the marginal currency trader can diversify away currency risk and alternative specifications under which th...