The paper addresses the effects of international liquidity conventions on the conduct and success of short-run income stabilization. Two interdependent and noncooperative nations attempt to minimize output variance subject to the international convention that adequate international reserve stocks be maintained. We demonstrate that the Nash outcome of nations which are bound by international reserve constraints is Pareto superior to the Nash outcome of unconstrained nations. With a formal model, we derive the set of Pareto-optimal liquidity conventions and explore the sensitivity of this set to the macroeconomic structural and stochastic characteristics of the nations and to the stabilization instruments that are employed.

The dependence of national output variances on the structural and stochastic features of world markets and on the global exchange arrangement is depicted in a multi-country model of income and exchange rate determination. The set of Pareto optimal exchange arrangements is displayed. Examples are presented to illustrate the empirical determinants of an optimal arrangement, the situations under which currency blocs are Pareto optimal, and the distributional conflicts which often arise in an asymmetric world.

Abstrac-t-This paper gathers evidence on the contribution of various techniques of exchange rate management to the output stability of twelve industrial countries. We estimate the distribution of unanticipated disturbances in outputs and the payments balances under pegged exchange rates from the 1955-1971 experience. We use this distribution to characterize the foreign exchange market intervention procedures which simultaneously minimize the output variances of the sample countries. The efficient procedures and the alternatives of managed floats, basket pegs, and the European currency area are compared according to structure and efficacy; and several implications for I.M.F. surveillance of exchange rates are drawn.

Graphs in corporate annual reports form part of a powerfully designed annual report package that offers considerable potential for “impression management.” The primary purpose of this paper is to determine whether graph use depends on corporate performance. Time‐series analysis, not previously used in the financial graphs literature, allows discretionary changes in graph use by companies to be identified and related to changes in individual companies' corporate performance over time. Based on the prior financial graphs and accounting choice literature, we develop two hypotheses that relate changes in graph use to changes in corporate performance. These hypotheses focus on the aggregate and individual company levels. We base our analysis on the corporate annual reports of 137 top UK companies that were in continued existence during the five‐year period from 1988 to 1992. At both the aggregate and individual company levels, we find the decision to use key financial variable (KFV) graphs, the primary graphical choice, to be associated positively with corporate performance measures. This finding is consistent with the manipulation hypothesis ‐ that is, that financial graphs in corporate annual reports are used to “manage” favorably the reader's impression of company performance, and hence that there is a reporting bias.