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Gresham's Law and the Demand for NRU's and SDR's: A Reply

Robert Z. Aliber
Quarterly Journal of Economics 1969 83(4), 704
Journal Article Gresham's Law and the Demand for NRU's and SDR'S: A Reply Get access Robert Z. Aliber Robert Z. Aliber University of Chicago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 83, Issue 4, November 1969, Pages 704–705, https://doi.org/10.2307/1885459 Published: 01 November 1969

Gresham's Law, Asset Preferences, and the Demand for International Reserves

Robert Z. Aliber
Quarterly Journal of Economics 1967 81(4), 628
Introduction, 628. — I. The demand for international reserves under the gold exchange system, 630; adjustment to asset preferences, 630; crisis in the gold exchange standard, 631. — II. The demand for reserves in the IMF system, 631; attributes of reserve assets, 632; ranking of reserve assets, 633 adjustment to asset preferences, 634; changes in asset attributes, 636. — III. Conclusion, 638.

The Costs and Benefits of the U.S. Role as a Reserve Currency Country

Robert Z. Aliber
Quarterly Journal of Economics 1964 78(3), 442
Introduction, 442. — I. Benefits of the U.S. reserve currency role, 445; the flexibility advantage, 445; the income advantage, 446. — II. The costs of the U.S. reserve currency role, 447; the constraint on independent domestic policies, 447; the devaluation constraint, 450; the burden of supplying reserves to other countries, 452; the burden of managing private gold markets, 454. — III. Conclusion, 454.

Rules and Authorities in International Monetary Arrangements: The Role of Central Banks

Robert Z. Aliber
American Economic Review 2000 90(2), 43-47
The discussion about new international financial architecture in the last several years is the most extensive debate about international monetary reform since the 1960's. The motivation for the current debate has been the sharp declines in GDP that resulted from the recent financial crises in Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea. The 1990's debate about international monetary reform differs from the earlier debate in two important ways-one is certainly important and the other may be important. In the 1960's there was a clear identification of the problem that had to be resolved; a mechanism was needed that would enable Germany, Japan, and numerous other countries to satisfy their demand for international reserve assets without inducing a persistent U.S. payments deficit. The problem involved the consistency between the demand and supply of reserves at a global level. In contrast, currently there is no agreement on the problem that must be resolved, as is strikingly evident from the diversity of proposals to reform the architecture. One view is that capital flows are too volatile, another is that bank regulation in many countries is inadequate (transparency and accountability are the buzzwords), and a third is that exchange rates have been pegged when they should have been allowed to float. A fourth is that there is need for an international lender of last resort. The debate in the 1960's originated with individuals in the universities; for several years those in the financial establishment were reluctant to accept the definition of the problem. They slighted the connection between the increase in demand for international reserve assets in Germany, Italy, Japan, and a number of other countries and the U.S. payments balance. In contrast, in the 1990's the discussion of reform initially involved individuals in official institutions. The uniqueness of the recent events was the combination of the sharp sudden depreciation of national currencies and the large loan losses incurred by the domestic banks that appear to have been in the range of 15-20 percent of GDP in the affected countries. The extent of currency overshooting was more extensive than in any previous episode. The debate about whether the Asian Financial Crisis is primarily a domestic banking and real-estate crisis or instead primarily a foreignexchange crisis partly stimulated by the rapid move to financial liberalization still has not been resolved. At the onset of the crisis in each of the several countries, there was a severe liquidity squeeze; asset prices declined sharply. Asset prices increased as this squeeze abated, but these prices have renmained much below their levels prior to the crisis; the implication is that these assets were substantially overvalued prior to the crisis. Much of the discussion has involved the fit or consistency among unrest-rained cross-border capital movements, the exchange-rate arrangement (and particularly whether currencies are pegged or free to float), and the central-bank monetary policies. One theme is that currencies cannot be pegged if capital flows are not constrained; the interpretation is that floating exchange rates would be preferable to pegged rates. The dominant view is that the severity of the Asian crisis reflects the fact that the central banks were reluctant to permit their currencies to depreciate when the capital inflow declined. The three papers in this session represent a tripartite approach toward restructuring institutional arrangements: one part is the role of the exchange rates, a second part is the role of international financial institutions, and the third is the role of central banks. These three institutional components can be arranged in a hierarchy, and the key is the role of central banks and their choice of monetary policies, which in turn has implications for the preferred choice of the exchange-rate regime. The central question is * Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, 1101 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637.