Is there an Optimal Exchange Rate Regime?
Starting from the gold standard regime of fixed rates, passing through the adjustable peg system after the Second World War, it has finally ended up with a system of managed floats after 1973. Since 1985, the pendulum has started swinging, though very slowly and erratically, in the direction of introducing some amount of fixity and rule based management of exchange rates. Despite these empirical facts, there is a school of thought within the professional which argues that in the years to come there will be only two types of exchange rate regimes: truly fixed rate arrangements like currency unions or currency boards, or truly market determined, independently floating exchange rates. The “middle ground” — regimes such as adjustable pegs, crawling pegs, crawling bands and managed floating — will pass into history. Some analysts even predict that three currency blocks — the US dollar block, the Euro block and the Yen Continue reading