The effective governance of global money and finance is under enormous stress. Deep changes over the last decade in capital markets, exchange rate systems, and government finances suggest dramatic shifts in the contours of monetary power, with...

Currencies and Politics is the first comprehensive, in-depth comparison of the institutions and processes that formulate domestic and external monetary policy in the U.S., Germany, and Japan. It outlines the differences in policymaking among the three countries and the policy patterns they produced over the postwar period.

Europe's monetary union will represent the most profound transformation of the international monetary system since the transition from fixed to flexible exchange rates in the early 1970s. It will compete with the erosion of American dominance and the dramatic increase in capital mobility for the distinction of being the most far-reaching change in the global monetary system since the Bretton Woods conference of 1944. Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) will create in Europe a new monetary actor with an economic size roughly comparable to the United States, ushering in a new era in international...

Since the financial crisis in the late 1990s, Asian governments have been considering strengthening regional monetary and financial cooperation. Proposals have ranged from the Asian Monetary Fund to common currencies. During the past two years, China, Japan, Korea, and the member-states of ASEAN have established a set of financial facilities under an agreement made in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) mobilizes a portion of the very large reserve holdings of its members for financial stabilization in a crisis. Organized under the "ASEAN plus three" grouping, these...

The dispute over Chinese exchange rate policy within the United States has generated a series of legislative proposals to restrict the discretion of the US Treasury Department in determining currency manipulation and to reform the department's accountability to the Congress. This study reviews the Treasury's reports to the Congress on exchange rate policy--introduced by the 1988 trade act--and Congress's treatment of them. It finds that the accountability process has often not worked well in practice: The coverage of the reports has sometimes been incomplete and not provided a sufficient...

Tangled Governance addresses the institutions that were deployed to fight the euro crisis, re-establish financial stability, and prevent contagion beyond Europe. The author addresses why European leaders chose to include the IMF and provides a detailed account of the decisions of the institutions that make up the 'Troika' (the European Commission, ECB, and IMF). He explains the institutions' negotiating strategies, the outcomes of their interaction, and the effectiveness of their cooperation. The book also explores the strategies of the member states, including Germany and the United...