As former Director of Research and a founding member of the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund, Jacques J. Polak has advised theoreticians and policymakers worldwide. This collection brings together his most current writings, and is published under the auspices of the IMF. The hallmark of Dr. Polak's recent research has been his ability to draw on decades of personal experience and reflection to comprehend and describe the context for current policy debates. In the past decade, he has contributed much to the debates on international financial policy and the role of the IMF, and this volume brings together most of these recent papers to make them accessible to a broader audience.

Former students of Dr H. J. Witteveen and many of those who collaborated with him in the past decades have decided a while ago that his great scientific and social merits are ample reason for presenting him with a Liber Amicorum. The fortieth anniversary of his appointment as professor at the Netherlands School of Economics in Rotterdam in the Spring of 1988 seemed a suitable time for presentation. For this purpose a committee was formed consisting of the members listed below. The last three of these also act as editorial committee of this anniversary volume. The topic the editorial committee chose is 'The quest for national and global economic stability'; this topic has always attracted Dr Witteveen's special attention and is in fact the common theme of his publications and speeches. In compiling this volume, the editorial committee tried to give expression to the three fields in which Dr Witt eve en developed his main activities: university, politics and international economic organizations. The committee is deeply grateful to the authors who promised and supplied their contributions with great enthusiasm. All contributions were completed before August 1, 1987.

This two volume set brings together a key selection of papers written by Jacques J. Polak over the last 50 years in the fields of economics, econometrics and finance. Presented under five broad headings, the collection begins with his work on international and national business cycles - a subject on which the author worked with Nobel Prize winner Jan Tinbergen - problems of international trade and balance of payments adjustment. Later sections examine exchange rates and how they affect the balance of payments, inflation and hyperinflation; the monetary approach to the balance of payments, a subject that the author pioneered in the IMF and that became the framework of the conditionality of IMF credits; and international liquidity, with particular reference to the special drawing right (SDR). The final section features the author's essays on the international monetary system itself, including topics such as the international co ordination of national economic policies, the changes over time in the objectives of national policy making in the main industrial countries and reform of the system. Economic Theory and Financial Policy will be welcomed by researchers, students and practitioners concerned with economics, government finance, banking and international economic relations.