Band of fluctuation

Last updated

The band of fluctuation is the range within which the market value of a national currency is permitted to fluctuate by international agreements, or by unilateral decision by the central bank. [1]

Contents

History

The IMF created a fixed exchange rate system for the first time in July 1944, in which its members agreed on administratively fixed US dollar currency parities and/or gold parities. The US $ currency parity indicated how many units of a foreign currency were equivalent to one US dollar. [2] The gold parities and/or US $ parities were used to calculate the parities of the other currencies. This created a system of fixed exchange rates between the member countries. [3] In May 1949, the IMF set the first exchange rate parity at 1 US $ = 3.33 DM; by September 1949, the IMF parity was already at 4.20 DM due to the devaluation of the DM. In March 1961, it fell to DM 4.00 due to the first revaluation of the DM, followed by the second DM revaluation in October 1969 to DM 3.66 and a third in December 1969 to DM 3.22. [4]

Related Research Articles

Special drawing rights are supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets defined and maintained by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). SDRs are units of account for the IMF, and not a currency per se. They represent a claim to currency held by IMF member countries for which they may be exchanged. SDRs were created in 1969 to supplement a shortfall of preferred foreign exchange reserve assets, namely gold and U.S. dollars. The ISO 4217 currency code for special drawing rights is XDR and the numeric code is 960.

Purchasing power parity (PPP) is a measure of the price of specific goods in different countries and is used to compare the absolute purchasing power of the countries' currencies. PPP is effectively the ratio of the price of a basket of goods at one location divided by the price of the basket of goods at a different location. The PPP inflation and exchange rate may differ from the market exchange rate because of tariffs, and other transaction costs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reserve currency</span> Currencies held by monetary authorities as part of their foreign exchange reserves

A reserve currency is a foreign currency that is held in significant quantities by central banks or other monetary authorities as part of their foreign exchange reserves. The reserve currency can be used in international transactions, international investments and all aspects of the global economy. It is often considered a hard currency or safe-haven currency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Exchange rate</span> Rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another

In finance, an exchange rate is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another currency. Currencies are most commonly national currencies, but may be sub-national as in the case of Hong Kong or supra-national as in the case of the euro.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Global financial system</span> Global framework for capital flows

The global financial system is the worldwide framework of legal agreements, institutions, and both formal and informal economic action that together facilitate international flows of financial capital for purposes of investment and trade financing. Since emerging in the late 19th century during the first modern wave of economic globalization, its evolution is marked by the establishment of central banks, multilateral treaties, and intergovernmental organizations aimed at improving the transparency, regulation, and effectiveness of international markets. In the late 1800s, world migration and communication technology facilitated unprecedented growth in international trade and investment. At the onset of World War I, trade contracted as foreign exchange markets became paralyzed by money market illiquidity. Countries sought to defend against external shocks with protectionist policies and trade virtually halted by 1933, worsening the effects of the global Great Depression until a series of reciprocal trade agreements slowly reduced tariffs worldwide. Efforts to revamp the international monetary system after World War II improved exchange rate stability, fostering record growth in global finance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bretton Woods system</span> Financial-economic agreement reached in 1944

The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial relations among the United States, Canada, Western European countries, and Australia among 44 other countries after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among independent states. The Bretton Woods system required countries to guarantee convertibility of their currencies into U.S. dollars to within 1% of fixed parity rates, with the dollar convertible to gold bullion for foreign governments and central banks at US$35 per troy ounce of fine gold. It also envisioned greater cooperation among countries in order to prevent future competitive devaluations, and thus established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to monitor exchange rates and lend reserve currencies to nations with balance of payments deficits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belize dollar</span> Official currency of Belize

The Belize dollar is the official currency in Belize. It is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or alternatively BZ$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ecuadorian sucre</span> Former currency of Ecuador

The Sucre was the currency of Ecuador between 1884 and 2000. Its ISO code was ECS and it was subdivided into 10 decimos and 100 centavos. The sucre was named after Latin American political leader Antonio José de Sucre. The currency was replaced by the United States dollar as a result of the 1998–99 financial crisis.

In macroeconomics and modern monetary policy, a devaluation is an official lowering of the value of a country's currency within a fixed exchange-rate system, in which a monetary authority formally sets a lower exchange rate of the national currency in relation to a foreign reference currency or currency basket. The opposite of devaluation, a change in the exchange rate making the domestic currency more expensive, is called a revaluation. A monetary authority maintains a fixed value of its currency by being ready to buy or sell foreign currency with the domestic currency at a stated rate; a devaluation is an indication that the monetary authority will buy and sell foreign currency at a lower rate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foreign exchange market</span> Global decentralized trading of international currencies

The foreign exchange market is a global decentralized or over-the-counter (OTC) market for the trading of currencies. This market determines foreign exchange rates for every currency. It includes all aspects of buying, selling and exchanging currencies at current or determined prices. In terms of trading volume, it is by far the largest market in the world, followed by the credit market.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impossible trinity</span> Economic impossibility

The impossible trinity is a concept in international economics and international political economy which states that it is impossible to have all three of the following at the same time:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Exchange rate regime</span>

An exchange rate regime is a way a monetary authority of a country or currency union manages the currency about other currencies and the foreign exchange market. It is closely related to monetary policy and the two are generally dependent on many of the same factors, such as economic scale and openness, inflation rate, the elasticity of the labor market, financial market development, and capital mobility.

International finance is the branch of financial economics broadly concerned with monetary and macroeconomic interrelations between two or more countries. International finance examines the dynamics of the global financial system, international monetary systems, balance of payments, exchange rates, foreign direct investment, and how these topics relate to international trade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yugoslav dinar</span> Currency of Yugoslavia

The dinar was the currency of Yugoslavia. It was introduced in 1920 in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was replaced by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The dinar was subdivided into 100 para.

The Triffin dilemma or Triffin paradox is the conflict of economic interests that arises between short-term domestic and long-term international objectives for countries whose currencies serve as global reserve currencies. This dilemma was identified in the 1960s by Belgian-American economist Robert Triffin, who pointed out that the country whose currency, being the global reserve currency, foreign nations wish to hold, must be willing to supply the world with an extra supply of its currency to fulfill world demand for these foreign exchange reserves, leading to a trade deficit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nixon shock</span> 1971 decoupling of the US dollar from gold

The Nixon shock was a series of economic measures undertaken by United States President Richard Nixon in 1971, in response to increasing inflation, the most significant of which were wage and price freezes, surcharges on imports, and the unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold.

The Smithsonian Agreement, announced in December 1971, created a new dollar standard, whereby the currencies of a number of industrialized states were pegged to the US dollar. These currencies were allowed to fluctuate by 2.25% against the dollar. The Smithsonian Agreement was created when the Group of Ten (G-10) states raised the price of gold to 38 dollars, an 8.5% increase over the previous price at which the US government had promised to redeem dollars for gold. In effect, the changing gold price devalued the dollar by 7.9%.

A fixed exchange rate, often called a pegged exchange rate, is a type of exchange rate regime in which a currency's value is fixed or pegged by a monetary authority against the value of another currency, a basket of other currencies, or another measure of value, such as gold.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Currency basket</span> Financial portfolio

A currency basket is a portfolio of selected currencies with different weightings. A currency basket is commonly used by investors to minimize the risk of currency fluctuations and also governments when setting the market value of a country’s currency.

Prior to European colonization, early Aboriginal Australian communities traded using items such as tools, food, ochres, shells, raw materials and stories, although there is no evidence of the use of currencies.

References

  1. Burda, Wyplosz (1997). Macroeconomics: A European Text (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN   0199264961.
  2. Helmut Lipfert, Einführung in die Währungspolitik, 1973, S. 121 f.
  3. Hauke Rath, Wirtschaft, Geld und Börse in der Zeitung, 2000, S. 273
  4. Bernd Engel/Hans Herber, Volkswirtschaftslehre für Studium und Bankpraxis, 1983, S. 252

See also

Notes and references