The first Handbook of International Economics, edited by Ronald W. Jones and Peter B. Kenen, was published in two volumes in 1984 and 1985. These volumes surveyed the existing state of the art in research on “real” and “monetary” aspects of international economics. Of course, the field has evolved enormously over the past decade, and many areas that are central to modern research were barely touched upon in the original Handbook. On the macroeconomic side, topics such as the intertemporal approach to the current account, sovereign default, and speculative attacks received virtually no consideration. More fundamentally, the macroeconomics papers in the first Handbook were largely based on aggregative Keynesian models; models with microfoundations appeared only in a couple of isolated sections. On the trade side, formal models of international trade with imperfect competition were still in their infancy in 1985, whereas today they form the basis for much of modern trade theory. Fueled by theoretical developments, research on topics such as strategic trade policy, trade and growth, and economic integration has burgeoned in the past decade
