Topics in International Finance

National Income Accounting and Deficits

World Economic Outlook Datamapper
WEO country data
WEO country data - tables

Currency Markets
- Coordinated Forex Intervention "Works" by Menzie Chinn, Econobrowser, March 18, 2011.
- PACIFIC Exchange Rate Service from the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia.
- The $ 4 Trillion Dollar Question: What Explains FX growth since the 2007 Survey
  by Michael R. King and Dagfinn Rime.
  Bank of International Settlements Quarterly Review , December 2010.
  Summarizes the most complete survey of the foreign exchange markets, conducted every three years by the world's central banks. The full survey on Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity in 2010 is also available.
- The Foreign Exchange Market in the United States
  by Sam Y. Cross, NY Federal Reserve Bank, 1998.
  Excellent brief survey of FX markets in US.
- Links from credfinrisk.com.
- Financial Times Market Data.
- Financial Times Market Data - Currencies
  - FT Spot and forward dollar rates
  - FT exchange cross rates
  - FT Money rates
  - Covered Interest Arbitrage Tutorial from Bentley's Hughey Center for Financial Services.
  - Currency Traders and Exchange Rate Dynamics by Y.W.Cheung and Menzie Chinn.
    How FX dealers view the market.
- FX trading sites (play the market at your own risk!):
- Bank of International Settlements
  Coordinates Central Banks, issues reports such as:
  - BIS Report on FX Trading (March 2005)
- New York Federal Reserve Bank
  Handles Foreign Exchange reporting for Federal Reserve System
  - NY Fed Foreign Exchange
  - Quarterly Report on US Foreign Exchange Operations
Purchasing Power Parity
- The Big Mac Index from The Economist magazine. Be sure to read the Oct. 14, 2010 summary, which is key to understanding real exchange rates. There is also a video clip explaining the basic concept.
- Why Real Exchange Rates? by Luis A.V. Catao, Finance and Development,44:3, Sept. 2007, starts from the Big Mac Index to provide a nice brief explanation.
- Burgernomics: A Big Mac Guide to Purchasing Power Parity
  by Michael Pakko and Patricia Pollard, St.Louis Fed Quarterly Review , November 2003.
  WARNING: Set PDF Advanced Printing options to PRINT AS IMAGE
  or your output will be unreadable.
- For Here or to Go? Purchasing Power Parity and the Big Mac
  by Michael Pakko and Patricia Pollard.
- Penn World Tables
  - Understanding PPPs and PPP-based National Accounts by Angus Deaton and Alan Heston. Full explanation of how the Penn World Tables constructs their PPP measure.
- Methodology for CGER Exchange Rate Assessments by Jonathan Ostry et al. at the International Monetary Fund. CGER is the IMF's "Consulative Group on Exchange Rate Issues" You should review the two most interesting approaches: Macroeconomic Balance, focusing on the stability of the current account (flow) and the External Sustainability Approach, focusing on the sustainability of the net foreign asset position.
- Evaluating Historical CGER Assessments: How Well Have they Predicted Subsequent Exchange Rate Movements? by A. Abiad et all, from the IMF. The answer is better than previous models (more than 60 percent of the time getting the direction correct, which beats just a bit more than 50 percent of the time for most other models)
- The Purchasing Power Parity Puzzle by Kenneth Rogoff
  Journal of Economic Literature, 34:2(June 1996): 647-668.
- Purchasing Power Parity in the Long Run: A Test of the Dollar-Pound Exchange Rate (1890-1978)
  by Hali J. Edison
  Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 19:3(Aug. 1987), 376-387
The Gold Standard -- Classical and Interwar
- Gold Standard by Michael Bordo, Concise Encyclopedia of Economcs at the Library of Economics and Liberty. Good brief summary.
- Gold Standard , by Lawrence Officer, at EH.net. Longer and more detailed on line encylopedia article (from Economic History website).
- Bank Rate Policy Under the International Gold Standard by Barry Eichengreen, Mark W. Watson, and Richard Grossman, Economic Journal, 95(Sept. 1985), 725-745.
- International Aspects of the Great Depression and the Crisis of 2007 by Richard Grossman and Christopher Meissner, NBER Working Paper 16269, Aug. 2010.
Monetary systems and their problems
- International Monetary Fund: Money Matters
  The following links form a brief history of the IMF:
- A Tale of Two Trilemmas by Kevin O'Rourke. Eurointellegence website, April 15, 2011.
Fixed exchange rates
- Exchange Rate Regimes -- a classfication based on actual operation from the International Monetary Fund.
- Maurice Obstfeld; Kenneth Rogoff
  The Mirage of Fixed Exchange Rates
  Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9:4 (Autumn 1995): pp. 73-96.
- Carmen M. Reinhart
  The Mirage of Floating Exchange Rates
  American Economic Review, 90:2 (May, 2000), pp. 65-70.
Global savings glut and financial crisis, 2005-11
- Currency Mismatches, Debt Intolerance, and Original Sin: Why they Are Not the Same and Why it Matters by Barry Eichengreen, Ricardo Haussman, and Ugo Panizza, NBER Working Paper 10036, October 2003.
- Original Sin (economics) Wikipedia article.
- The Global Savings Glut and the Current Account Deficit Speech by Ben Bernanke, March 10, 2005.
  Revenge of the Glut , by Paul Krugman, NY Times, March 2, 2009.
- Revenge of the Global Savings Glut (Wonkish) by Paul Krugman, April 18, 2011. Follow-up by Krugman.
  The Doctrine of Immaculate Transfer . Krugman argues that the adjustment to trade imbalance and the debt crisis can't be painless.

Brad de Long summarizes Eichengreen's paper on video.

Video on the dollar Martin Feldstein, speaking at Stanford University

Topics in International Finance

National Income Accounting and Deficits

Currency Markets

Purchasing Power Parity

The Gold Standard -- Classical and Interwar

Monetary systems and their problems

Fixed exchange rates

Global savings glut and financial crisis, 2005-11