Foreign Exchange

Foreign Exchange in Practice, now in its 3rd edition, is the single reference to the foreign exchange market any financial practitioner needs to have. It explains the concepts involved in foreign exchange and their application to real-life situations. The book was originally developed as a textbook for the Citibank Bourse Course, an intensive course available to clients and staff of Citibank to improve their mastery of these complex markets. The course has been taught in 50 countries since 1975. This new edition includes the Euro amongst its currencies, expansion of material on interest rate concepts, exotic options and value at risk.

Recent events have reignited the debate over the future of the international monetary system. This book, part of the Integrating National Economies series, examines international monetary options for the twenty-first century. Barry Eichengreen argues that it will not be possible for governments to prevent exchange rate movements from exceeding prespecified limits. Changes in technology, market structure, and politics will force countries that have traditionally pegged their exchange rates to choose between floating rates and monetary unification. Eichengreen describes the various international monetary arrangements with which policymakers have experimented in the past. He introduces the requirements that an international monetary system must satisfy and illustrates how these requirements have been met over time. He analyzes which preconditions for the smooth operation of international monetary systems in the past will be impossible to achieve in the next century and creates a list of feasible options for future policymakers.

`In summary, the book is valuable as a textbook both at the advanced undergraduate level and at the graduate level. It is also very useful for the economist who wants to be brought up-to-date on theoretical and empirical research on exchange rate behaviour.' Journal of International Economics

Monetary policy mistakes can cause serious economic damage. Central banks and their worldwide observers must strive to understand the transmission mechanism of monetary policy so that they know what monetary policy can do and what it should do to stabilize inflation and output--however imprecise that understanding may be. This volume sets out different aspects of the transmission mechanism, covering practical difficulties, as well as focusing on key areas such as the exchange rate and the monetary sector. The experiences of many countries are explained.

It focuses clearly and simply on the underlying economics of exchange rate dtermination and balance of payments. In Part I the author presents basic concepts within historical perspectives of the US and Global Economy. Part II intriduces a basic analytical model - usable with fixed and floating exchange rates, in which capital mobility is complete, real exchange rates are variable, and investment spending is endogenous. Variants of the model are used for short and long-run comparative static analysis. In addition, there is a relatively long chapter devoted to dynamic analysis with rational expectations. Part III contains three chapters on policy, including a full chapter on the European Moneatry System.

Existing models fail to explain the large fluctuations in the real exchange rates of most currencies over the past twenty years. The Natural Real Exchange Rate approach (NATREX) taken here offers an alternative paradigm to those which focus on short-run movements of nominal eschange rates, purchasing power parity of the representative agent intertemporal optimization models. Yet it is also neo-classical in its stress upon the accepted fundamentals driving a real economy. It concentrates on the real exchange rate, and explains medium- tolong-run movements in equilibrium real exchange rates in terms of fundamental variables: the productivity of capital and social (public plus private) thrift at home and abroad. The NATREX approach is a family of growth models, each tailored to the characteristics of the countries considered. The authors explain the real international value of the US dollar relativ to the G10 countries, and the US current account. These are two large economies. The model is also applied to small economies, where it explains the real value of the Australian dollar and the Latin American currencies relative to the US dollar. The model is relevant for developing countries where the foreign debt is a concern. Finally, it is applied to two medium-sized economies to explain the bilateral exchange rate between the French franc and the Deutsche Mark. The authors demonstrate both the promise of the NATREX model and its applicability to economies large and small. Alongside the analysis, econometrics, and technical details of these case studies, the introductory chapter explains in accessible terms the rationale behind the approach. The mix of theory and empirical evidence makes this book relevant to academics and advanced graduate students, and to central banks, ministries of finance, and those concerned with the foreign debt of developing countries.

The previous decade ushered in a globalization of finance and governments abandoned their "Keynesian" responsibility to engage in international financial management. A new doctrine of global neoclassicism arose, based on the premise that regulation of financial markets was futile. This volume rejects that approach, and asks whether national policy autonomy is still possible. The authors address financial openness from a "political economy" perspective, including both general historical and theoretical approaches, as well as case studies of countries such as Australia, Mexico, and Pakistan.

In recent years, Japan's financial market has seen dramatic changes, in particular the explosive growth of currency trading and the increasing international role of the yen. Reszat looks at the market, its idiosyncracies and its future global role.

A comparative examination of international capital movements in Latin America and their influence on democracy and development.

Particularly timely in light of the recent Mexican peso crisis, Mobile Capital and Latin American Development examines the causes, consequences, and implications of the Latin American capital flight of the 1980s. It addresses the increasingly mobile and privatized nature of international capital and its power to shape economic policy in those countries.

Through a comparison of the policy experiences of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela, James E. Mahon finds that those countries that suffered the most capital flight had previously faced fewer structural trade problems and had not reoriented their exchange policies to diversify exports and deal with exchange-market instability. Since the countries that stumbled worst into capital flight before the debt crisis were later among the most aggressive neoliberal reformers, Mahon discusses the ways in which overseas capital served as a kind of pressure for free-market reform. Finally, the idea that internationally mobile capital now can operate as a kind of senate -- an arm of the wealthy few, guarding the established order against the arbitrary, dangerous tendencies of the executive and popular chamber -- is examined with relation to theories of dependency and the institutionalization of democracy.

Foreign exchange black markets in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica and Peru were studied during the period 1990-93. This group of case studies presents a broad view of the phenomenon in Latin American at the beginning of the 1990s. This is not a traditional economic analysis of foreign exchange markets, for many reasons. Most importantly, since black markets are illegal by definition, they are not recorded in offical statistics and the participants are not easily identified. Nevertheless, these markets are often widely used and well known to people living in the Latin American countries, so it is possible to paint a reasonably accurate picture of them.

This work poses the important question of whether exchange rates are ultimately tied down by economic fundamentals. The subject is analysed from an asset holder's perspective and Streissler takes the reader through a wide-ranging study.

The major purpose of the book is to illustrate that triangular arbitrage in the foreign exchange market can be profitable. This idea is reinforced by the recent evolution of an independent cross market, and the remarkable developments in telecommunications. The book illustrates how a dealer of Foreign Exchange can apply the "buy low and sell high" rule without taking any risk. The keys to avoid the risk are speed and precision. All the procedures are computerized so that speed and precision problems that are inherent in manual trading are now solved.