【正文】 use of speculators’ actions. Of course, the important issue for research is whether these misalignments are in some sense more or less severe than the misalignments that can occur under pegged exchange rates. The daylightsavingtime argument applies here: When the exchange rate is pegged, economic responses to a misalignment must involve changes in many nominal prices (and associated shortrun disruptions). Currency Competition under Floating A system of floating exchange rates provides the opportunity for petition among monies. A fixed rate system provides fewer roles for petition, because suppliers (central banks) fix the relative prices of their products. Similarly, a system of fixed exchange rates also encourages international cooperation in moary policies. While international cooperation may sound healthy, its real meaning is more likely to be collusion among governments for the benefit of special interests. (Milton Friedman’s once stated, half seriously, that government officials liked pegged exchange rates because the ongoing crises and problems of that system provided opportunities to travel to lavish international meetings.) Political Forces What political forces have affected past choices of exchange rate systems? Who are the winners and who are the losers from changes in the system, or the continued operation of either system? (A rule of thumb: if you don’t know, then you’re probably not one of the big winners.) Are the main forces benevolent advocates of some “mon good,” or more 8 subtle proponents of special interests? Discussion of exchange rate systems has tended to ignore these issues, and focused mainly on costs and benefits for the mythical “representative individual.” Yet few changes in government policy, even in (or particularly in) subtle aspects of moary and financial policies of governments, fail to involve special interests hiding beneath the veneer. Currencies are naturally tied to central banks (or currency boards). A change to a mon currency, such as the Euro, requires a change in institutions for moary policy. And other institutional changes that affect regulation and oversight of financial markets and institutions, tax policies, regulatory policies, and government spending are likely to acpany that change in moary institutions. The consequences of these institutional changes may be farreaching, and might easily dominate other costs and benefits attributable to the difference between a mon currency and many currencies. This issue generalizes beyond a system of mon currencies, to a system of pegged exchange rates among nations with separate central banks. Policies of pegging exchange rates can create problems that lead to formation and involvement of institutions (such as the International Moary Fund) that play various roles in “managing” the “international moary system.” Those changes in institutions involve changes in political pressures and other kinds of policies. Of course, these institutional changes may have benefits rather than costs. But when political forces start clamoring for a change in institutions, it is time for wise men to bolt their doors and close their shutters, before someone from the government arrives on the front stoop. The Future One view of the future asserts that the dollarEuro exchange rate will bee the key exchange rate, leading to pressure to stabilize it, and 9 that Japan will want to keep the value of the Yen closely linked to both those currencies. Robert Mundell (1999: 444) believes that “by 2020 we will be back to a world where we get more fixed exchange rates, and the International Moary Fund will be dragged back to its original function.” An alternative view is not simply less Eurocentric (noting the increased role of Asian nations in addition to Japan in the future world economy), but also less governmentcentric. While some political forces will seek stabilization of the exchange rate between the dollar and the Euro, other sorts of political pressures will emerge for various national policies that are inconsistent with such stabilization. Meanwhile, technological developments will result in increased sophistication of financial and payment systems that makes the issues increasingly less important. Eventually, people may be able to choose both the units of account and the medium of exchange that they employ for their own transactions, and they may even employ multiple units of account— and multiple media of exchange (which are likely to be increasingly electronic and increasingly provided by private firms) in their various trades (see Dorn 1997). Consequently, people may want petition among units of account so that they can freely choose the one that suits them best. It seems unlikely that fixing exchange rates— or adopting mon currencies— will help to create a money that people will choose to adopt as eith