New International Financial Arrangements

New research, new policy proposals, new problems, and new policy officials have at last moved the organization of the international monetary system to the center of current attention. The Bank of Japan is to be congratulated for forecasting these developments when it chose exchange rate regimes as the topic when it first planned this conference 18 months ago. I have been asked by the organizers to broaden the topic to include the role of international institutions, itself a subject of recent interest to policymakers.