The decade of the 1970s was one of turbulence in international monetary arrangements - the exchange rates fluctuated through a wide range, national price levels more than doubled fueled partly by several oil price shocks, and the external debts of the developing countries increased from $120 billion to

In the two decades prior to publication of this 1994 book, international monetary relations had been characterised by latent instability, and then by severe tensions. Yet the issue of reforming the international monetary system does not appear on the agenda of the policy makers of the major countries involved. The International Monetary System tries to analyse this apparent contradiction. It brings together contributions from some of the most authoritative academic economists and monetary officials, and examines each of the fundamental functions of the international monetary system. There is broad support for improving present monetary arrangements with the aim of ensuring more stable conditions in monetary and financial markets and of promoting the orderly adjustment of payments disequilibria. For political reasons a fully-fledged reform exercise is unlikely, but very few experts seem to like the status quo. This book provides the reader with a comprehensive account of the institutional and policy changes required to manage an increasingly integrated and interdependent global monetary and financial system.

Growing global imbalances threaten to induce a collapse of the dollar, which could in turn produce a severe recession in the rest of the world. This crisis could force countries to say "never again" and search for a system to prevent similar disasters. The system that could do so is a reference rate system—where countries' authorities are forbidden from intervening in order to push the exchange rate too far from what is termed the "reference rate." It could help a country's authorities manage its exchange rate to avoid large misalignments, assist the private sector in forming more dependable expectations of future exchange rates and thus to manage their businesses more efficiently in a world of floating exchange rates, and aid the International Monetary Fund in designing and managing an effective system of multilateral surveillance. The world economy would function better as a result, with less chance of the global imbalances leading to a world recession.

This collection of papers, edited by Victor Argy and Paul De Grauwe, examines issues surrounding the choice of exchange rate regime in smaller industrial countries. It contains a comprehensive summary by Jacques J. Polak.