INTRODUCTION

One of the most pronounced international economic trends of the late twentieth century is the adoption of convertible currencies. For many years after World War II, countries maintained restrictions on the freedom of residents to convert domestic currency into foreign exchange, Until the end of the 1950s the industrial economies, aside from the United States and Canada, controlled purchases and sales of foreign currency for purposes related to current account transactions (that is, purchases and sales of goods and services abroad). Developing countries were slower still to restore convertibility on current account. The centrally planned economies, for whom restrictions on convertibility were a corollary of their strategy of suppressing the market economy, never began the process.