Exchange rate economics

de Peter Isard

This book describes and evaluates the literature on exchange rate economics. It provides a wide-ranging survey, with background on the history of international monetary regimes and the institutional characteristics of foreign exchange markets, an overview of the development of conceptual and empirical models of exchange rate behavior, and perspectives on the key issues that policymakers confront in deciding whether, and how, to try to stabilize exchange rates. The treatment of most topics is reasonably compact, with extensive references to the literature for those desiring to pursue individual topics further. The level of exposition is relatively easy to comprehend; the historical and institutional material (part I) and the discussion of policy issues (part III) contain no equations or technical notation, while the chapters on models of exchange rate behavior (part II) are written at a level intelligible to first-year graduate students or advanced undergraduates. The book will enlighten both students and policymakers, and should also serve as a valuable reference for many research economists.