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The argument that any exchange rate regimes other than firmly fixed and freely floating rates were infeasible — the so-called bipolarity thesis — acquired great popularity in the wake of the Asian crisis of a decade ago, but it has almost vanished today. One reason is surely the unkind empirical evidence, which shows that intermediate regimes — measured as those where both reserve and exchange rate changes lie in an intermediate range — are not in fact tending to disappear (Levy Yeyati and Sturzenegger, 2002). Another reason is the recognition that exchange rate policy should have other objectives besides avoiding crises, and that in the world we live in today it is reasonable to give these other objectives a significant priority. And perhaps a third factor is growing recognition that it is possible to design or operate intermediate regimes in ways that avoid exposing them to the dangers that were focused on by the disciples of bipolarity.

This article starts by distinguishing the options that countries face in choosing an exchange rate regime. It examines the advantages and disadvantages of each of them, finally suggesting that for most countries the real choice lies between freely floating rates, floating rates disciplined by a reference rate system, and an ill-defined managed floating with the management undefined. Three issues may influence the choice between those alternatives: transparency; perceived consistency with that pillar of current macroeconomic thinking, inflation targeting; and the theory of what determines exchange rates. In the latter context, it is argued that the current conventional wisdom of the economics profession is wrong, and that a more convincing diagnosis of the process of exchange rate determination lends support to the proposal for a reference rate system.

The article analyzes the limits of the IMF as a global multilateral economic agency to handle serious balance of payments disequilibria. Capital control and growth rates in developing Asia and the twin deficit problem of the United States are also discussed. It also assesses the probability of the reemergence of an exchange rate crisis in Southeast Asia and the wisdom of having an Asian IMF.

This is a substantially revised version of the paper presented to the Symposium on Asian Economic Integration organized by Nanyang Technology University in Singapore, 4–5 September 2008. The author is grateful to Teresa Carpenter for providing comments on an earlier version and to Pradumna B. Rana for encouraging him to update the paper with the discussion of recent international financial architecture reforms in response to the global financial crisis of 2007–2009. He also acknowledges competent editorial assistance by Barnard Helman. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in the paper are entirely those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the Asian Development Bank, its Institute, its executive directors, or the countries they represent.

In bioinformatics, the biological functions of proteins and their interactions can often be analyzed by the similarity of their sequences. In this paper, the authors combine the fractal dimension, empirical mode decomposition (EMD), and sliding window for protein sequence comparison. First, the protein sequence is characterized and digitized into a signal, and then the signal characteristics are obtained by using EMD and fractal dimension. Each protein sequence can be decomposed into Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs). The fixed window’s fractal dimension is applied to each IMF and the original signal to extract the protein sequence characteristics. Experiments have shown that the feature extracted by this hybrid method is superior to the EMD method alone.

This paper examines some of the effects on shareholder wealth of the Korean bank restructuring measures that followed the Korean IMF bailout. The Korean banks are divided into four groups to check for differences in market reactions to FSC restructuring mandates. We find that shareholders of healthy banks benefit when self-rescue or management improvement measures are implemented at distressed banks. Share prices of banks not directly involved in the restructuring process are not significantly influenced by the restructuring. However, shareholders of financially distressed banks suffered significant losses, as much as they would have incurred had the bank closed. Share prices of banks ordered to improve management were influenced as much as share prices of closed banks. We therefore conclude that financially weak banks were significantly affected by restructuring orders, while comparatively sound banks were not significantly influenced.

It is widely acknowledged that Korea will not be secure against future economic crisis without structural reform of finance, enterprise and labor markets. Real reform requires a transfer of authority from the government to market-based institutions, forcing banks to take full responsibility for the loans they authorize. Before the crisis, the government implicitly insured depositors' bank loans made to the large conglomerates, leaving banks little incentive to develop the necessary skills in credit analysis and loan monitoring. The insured agents did not take proper care to manage their risks. Moral hazard or will increased government control over the financial sector weaken market discipline?

Acoustic signals transmitted in underwater for distance communication are affected by numerous factors, random events, and corrupted with ambient noise, making them nonlinear and nonstationary in nature. Ambient noises are the background acoustic noises in the sea due to natural and manmade sources like wind, rain, seismic, marine species, harbor activities, motor on the boat, ship traffic, etc. In recent years, the application of Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) technique to analyze nonlinear and nonstationary signals has gained importance. In this paper an EMD system is proposed with an algorithm by implementing FFT to identify and extract all the acoustic stationary signals available in the underwater channel that are corrupted due to various ambient noises over a range of 100 Hz to 10 kHz in shallow water region. Further a new threshold detection technique is also incorporated in the algorithm for detection and extraction of composite signals that are not extracted properly. The threshold is calculated using the mean and variance of the noisy signal generated by various ambient noises in the ocean. The algorithm is also validated by transmitting three reference acoustic signals. The proposed EMD approach with threshold detector algorithm identifies and extracts all the signals transmitted along with other stationary signals available in the ocean against various ambient noises.

This paper contemplates ambitious reforms of the international financial architecture. It proposes routinising the expansion of IMF quotas and the conduct of exchange rate surveillance. It contemplates an expanded role for the SDR in international transactions, which would require someone — like the IMF — to act as market maker. It considers proposals for reimposing Glass–Steagall-like restrictions on commercial and investment banking, something that will have to be coordinated internationally to be feasible. All this of course presupposes meaningful IMF governance reform so that the institution has the legitimacy and efficiency to assume these additional responsibilities.

In the post-crisis agenda of reform of financial regulation, macroprudential policy has been assigned a central role. Some of the measures of this agenda involve restrictions on cross-border financial flows and discriminatory restrictions targeting particular financial institutions and activities. Others target corporate form and the relations between the constituent parts of banking groups. Many of the measures implemented or proposed as part of the reform agenda may be inconsistent with the World Trade Organization (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and with other bilateral and regional agreements on trade and investment in banking services. As a result both sets of rules may eventually require revision.

Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis, a series of currency swap arrangements among central banks have been reached, and many short-term ad hoc mechanisms have been later transformed into permanent institutions, with the decentralized role of the USD and increasing significance of other currencies. It is important to note, however, that currency swaps by Western countries are generally not intended to reform but to maintain stability of the U.S.-dominated international financial system and the USD hegemony. The comprehensive currency swap arrangements made among six major developed economies since the financial crisis exemplify their resistance to the international financial reform. Meanwhile, developing countries have also laid out their own blueprints, highlighted by China’s currency swap arrangements with 33 foreign central banks and the accelerating RMB internationalization. The currency swaps promoted by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) between the RMB and other currencies would inject supplementary liquidity to a turbulent market and offset impact from the selective currency swaps of the U.S. Federal Reserve, thus proving beneficial to developing countries. While such currency swaps are far from replacing the IMF’s role in stabilizing the global financial market, they are posing both challenges and new opportunities to the reform of the international financial system.

This brief paper a) focuses on important elements of the November Summit of G-20 Countries that resulted in the Washington Declaration; b) highlights problems with credit rating agencies and financial regulation; c) argues that the IMF is a laggard in being able to coordinate any major efforts to prevent, mitigate, or coordinate global issues; and d) identifies a number of important issues that deserve attention at the next G-20 Summit to be held in London on April 2^nd.

Decentralization to regional bodies and consolidation of short-term and developmental finance together constitute the best hope for governance reform in international financial institutions.

Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a record of ongoing electrical signal to represent the human brain activity. It has great potential for the diagnosis to treatment of mental disorder and brain diseases such as epileptic seizure. Features extraction and classification is a crucial task to detect the stage of ictal (i.e. seizure period) and interictal (i.e. period between seizures) EEG signals for the treatment and precaution of the patient. However, existing seizure and non-seizure feature extraction techniques are not good enough for the classification of ictal and interictal EEG signals considering their non-abrupt phenomena and inconsistency in different brain locations. In this paper, we present new approaches for feature extraction using high-frequency components from discrete cosine transformation (DCT) and intrinsic mode function (IMF) extracted from empirical mode decomposition (EMD). These features are then used as an input to least square-support vector machine (LV-SVM) to classify ictal and interictal EEG signals. Experimental results show that the proposed methods outperform the existing state-of-the-art method for better classification in terms of sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy with greater consistence of ictal and interictal period of epilepsy for benchmark dataset from different brain locations.

Leaders of a vast majority of the world’s nations hope to achieve three extraordinary accomplishments between now and 2030: end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and solve the challenge of climate change. The way these leaders will achieve these accomplishments will be through a set of 17 goals, called the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were adopted at the United Nations (UN) in September 2015. The SDGs outline a pathway to a more just, more resilient and more livable world. They are important for many reasons, but primarily because they are an opportunity for countries to collaborate across borders to solve the most pressing challenges of our day, like the climate crisis. The success of the SDGs is evaluated annually at a UN-sponsored High Level Political Forum (HLPF) that takes place at UN headquarters in New York City, and once every four years at the UN General Assembly. There is a role for everyone in the achievement of the SDGs, not just government leaders and diplomats, and the most exciting part of the process thus far has been the number of youth involved in learning about, promoting and enacting the SDGs.

The article analyzes the limits of the IMF as a global multilateral economic agency to handle serious balance of payments disequilibria. Capital control and growth rates in developing Asia and the twin deficit problem of the United States are also discussed. It also assesses the probability of the reemergence of an exchange rate crisis in Southeast Asia and the wisdom of having an Asian IMF.

The argument that any exchange rate regimes other than firmly fixed and freely floating rates were infeasible — the so-called bipolarity thesis — acquired great popularity in the wake of the Asian crisis of a decade ago, but it has almost vanished today. One reason is surely the unkind empirical evidence, which shows that intermediate regimes — measured as those where both reserve and exchange rate changes lie in an intermediate range — are not in fact tending to disappear (Levy Yeyati and Sturzenegger, 2002). Another reason is the recognition that exchange rate policy should have other objectives besides avoiding crises, and that in the world we live in today it is reasonable to give these other objectives a significant priority. And perhaps a third factor is growing recognition that it is possible to design or operate intermediate regimes in ways that avoid exposing them to the dangers that were focused on by the disciples of bipolarity.

This article starts by distinguishing the options that countries face in choosing an exchange rate regime. It examines the advantages and disadvantages of each of them, finally suggesting that for most countries the real choice lies between freely floating rates, floating rates disciplined by a reference rate system, and an ill-defined managed floating with the management undefined. Three issues may influence the choice between those alternatives: transparency; perceived consistency with that pillar of current macroeconomic thinking, inflation targeting; and the theory of what determines exchange rates. In the latter context, it is argued that the current conventional wisdom of the economics profession is wrong, and that a more convincing diagnosis of the process of exchange rate determination lends support to the proposal for a reference rate system.

G-20 originally a grouping of Finance Ministers under the aegis of IMF was elevated to the summit level and used quite effectively during the global financial and economic crisis of 2008–2009. Starting from the Seoul summit, G-20 leaders sought to make a transition from responding to a contingent situation to deal with the structural problems of the world economy. These included the problems of development, IMF reforms, international reserve currency and financial regulation. G-20 summit deliberations since then have not led to any significant progress in any of these areas. Objectives and policy measures agreed upon in almost all major areas of concern to G-20 are platitudinous in nature, having little operational significance. Moreover, they are couched in terms which makes it impossible to hold any government accountable for success or failure. G-20 has a very tenuous legal justification to play the role assigned to it. A vast majority of the members of the United Nations are outside it. Besides, given the composition of the G-20, emerging economies like India, China, and Brazil cannot in any effective manner that influence the outcome of G-20 deliberations. G-20 represents a significant institutionalization of the ongoing process of the erosion of the economic functions of the United Nations. In view of the above, interests of India, Brazil and other emerging economies can be best served through cooperation within the United Nations. However, the G-20 in its new role is firmly established and is likely to remain active in the near future. Therefore, a principal challenge for countries like India is to seek to reconcile their role in the wider forums of the United Nations with that in the G-20.