The International Monetary System

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International monetary system

An international monetary system can be defined as "rules, customs, instruments, facilities and organizations for effecting international payments" (Salvatore, 2012). There are three perspectives of the role of international monetary system: exchange rates determination, balance of payment disequilibrium adjustment and global liquidity provision (Jenkins and Zelenbaba, 2012). Movement of the exchange rates can be affect on the domestic monetary policy management and its consequence to global liquidity. In the other word, the international monetary system can be assessed in the following term: adjustment, liquidity and confidence (Salvatore, 2012). This means that minimizing the adjustment time and cost of balance of payment disequilibrium, providing enough international reserve assets to correct balance of payment deficits without deflation, and providing knowledge sufficiently on adjustment mechanism and international reserve are the proper performance of international monetary system.

Discuss the international monetary system role in promoting global trade and investment

Due to most countries have their own national currencies that no permission to legally use outside their country's borders and distinct national currencies may pose an important obstacle to international transactions. Thus, the international monetary system had adopted to facilitate international economic exchange.
This system can boost up international trade and investment when it operates smoothly; the system can slow down international trade and investment when it performs poorly or collapses. There are several systems in the classification of foreign exchange rates, for example, nominal, effective, real, fixed and floatin...

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...arted in 1939, the gold standard was ended (Hill, 2011).

The gold standard mechanism

In this system, national currencies exchange at a permanently fixed-exchange-rate and certify convertibility. This exchange rate was based on the gold par value that is the amount of a currency needed to purchase one ounce of "fine" or pure gold. With exchange rate permanently fixed, prices in each country moved in response to cross-border gold flows (Bordo and Kydland, 1995).

Moreover, the gold standard contains some powerful autonomous operation such as “price specie-flow mechanism” and “rules of the game” that simultaneously conduce all countries to balance of payment equilibrium (Krugman and Obstfeld, 2003). This equilibrium will happen when the money that a country's population spend for imports balance with the earning its population gain from its exports between nations.

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