The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. With nearly 300 released each year, working papers cover a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and national and international economic developments.
This paper develops a simple model of an international lender of last resort (ILOLR). The world economy consists of many open economies, each with a banking system and a central bank operating under a pegged exchange rate regime. The fragility of the banking system and the limited ability of a domestic central bank to provide international liquidity together can cause currency and banking crises. An international interbank market can help an economy with the needed international liquidity, but with potential costs of international financial contagion. An ILOLR can play a useful role in providing international liquidity and reducing international contagion.