International Monetary Cooperation

In September 1985, emissaries of the world's five leading industrial nations—the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan—secretly gathered at the Plaza Hotel in New York City and unveiled an unprecedented effort to correct the largest set of current account and exchange rate imbalances that had ever threatened the world economy. The Plaza Accord is credited with sharply realigning exchange rates, significantly reducing current account imbalances, and countering protectionist pressures in the United States. But did the Accord provide a foundation for ongoing international financial stability and policy coordination? Or was it simply a unique one-time coincidence of national interests? The Plaza experience continues to inform today's debates about the limits and possibilities of international monetary cooperation. In late 2015, leading policymakers and economists—including those who were involved in the Accord's design, negotiation, and implementation—held a Plaza Retrospective conference at the Baker Institute for Public Policy to evaluate the Accord's legacy and how its collaborative spirit can be applied today. This volume presents their views and analyses to provide guidance for a time when the world again faces the prospect of currency disequilibria, growing imbalances, trade policy reactions, and thus uncertainty for both the global economy and world politics.

The issue of countries artificially manipulating the value of their currencies is at the center of most debates about trade in the United States today. Critics of liberalizing trade have charged, for example, that China has suppressed the value of its currency in order to make its exports cheaper and imports more expensive. Thirty years ago, however, the Reagan administration confronted Japan with the same accusation. Then in a secret meeting in 1985, finance ministers from the United States, Japan and three other major economies in the world gathered in New York City at the Plaza Hotel in an effort to resolve a crisis caused by that criticism. The Plaza Accord coordinated exchange rates among the countries present, in turn depreciating the dollar and restoring some equity to the global market. Was that meeting a success? Or did it usher in 30 years of tensions that have hurt, rather than helped, the cause of improved trade? In late 2015, policymakers and academics held a Plaza Retrospective conference in Houston to evaluate the accord's successes and drawbacks, and how its collaborative spirit can be applied to today's increasingly integrated world economy. This volume, with contributions by former Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III and former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, presents their analyses.--

IMF economists work closely with member countries on a variety of issues. Their unique perspective on country experiences and best practices on global macroeconomic issues are often shared in the form of books on diverse topics such as cross-country comparisons, capacity building, macroeconomic policy, financial integration, and globalization.

This volume provides an analysis of the global monetary system and proposes a comprehensive yet evolutionary reform of the system aimed at creating better monetary cooperation for the twenty-first century.

This book offers a reassessment of the international monetary problems that led to the global economic crisis of the 1930s. The author shows how policies, in conjunction with the imbalances created by World War I, gave rise to the global crisis of the 1930s.

This comprehensive history, published jointly by the IMF and Oxford University Press, was written to mark the fiftieth anniversary of international monetary cooperation. From the establishment of the postwar international monetary system in 1944 to how the framework functions in a vastly expanded world economy, historian Harol James describes the tensions, negotiations, challenges, and progress of international monetary cooperation. This narrative offers a global perspective on the events and decisions that have shaped the world economy during the past fifty years.

This paper comprises documents relating to the history of the IMF, including some that preceded the drafting of the Articles of Agreement. The paper highlights that the first draft of Lord Keynes’ plan for a Clearing Union was circulated within the British Treasury on September 8, 1941. A fourth draft was given to Ministers on February 11, 1942. The first definitive version of Mr. White’s plan for a stabilization fund was a mimeographed draft dated April 1942. This covered both the IMF and the World Bank.

This paper discusses the history of the first 20 years of the IMF. It attempts to recount objectively what were its origins and what have been its plans and activities. The paper contains a chronological account of the evolution of the IMF from the original plans formulated in 1941 to the end of 1965, with a supplementary chapter summarizing subsequent events. It analyzes the IMF’s policies in three major fields and reviews its constitutional development.

International Monetary Cooperation among the United States, Japan, and Germany offers a first - and overdue - book- length study of counterproductive cooperation. It takes to task the critical importance of conducting systematic theory-guided empirical research to examine the validity of arguments that international monetary cooperation could be highly counterproductive. This book combines various methods - formal, quantitative, and qualitative - to study the theories of counterproductive monetary cooperation by focusing on the cooperative episodes among the major industrial countries - the United States, Japan, and Germany. For the first time, this book presents all theories of counterproductive cooperation in one place, subjects them to systematic, empirical scrutiny in the light of the experience of G-3 (U.S., Germany, and Japanese) cooperation since the 1970s, and suggests policy recommendations in the light of the findings.