An interdisciplinary and global approach to the different roles and impact of gold on society and the global economy from the late 19th century to the modern day.
This book provides a historical analysis that integrates the different roles of gold--monetary, commodity, banking, industrial and cultural--with the multiple actors- central banks, mining groups, refineries, bullion houses and major banks - to provide an understanding of their particular interests and reciprocal influence on the global gold market from the late 19th century to the present day. Adopting an inter-disciplinary and global approach, it establishes an innovative and rich dialogue between different branches of the social sciences, including microeconomics, business history, sociology, political and economic history.
Coverage of the book will include a comprehensive overview of the many facets of the global gold market's organization, from the extraction of this precious metal to its consumption. Special attention is given to some of the major international gold markets, such as London, Hong Kong, and Zurich, and to the national and global regulations regarding the gold trade. The book studies both the legal and illegal circuits of gold, as well as their interrelation. Together, the contributions show the complex networks and actors involved in different phases of this commodity chain, from the main gold producers, such as South Africa; to the major European financial markets; and then to the traditional Arab and Asiatic hoarding centres.
This collection of essays, most of which utilise new archival resources, will be of great interest to students and researchers examining the role of this key element in monetary, financial, political and social history.

This book presents empirical evidence that supports and facilitates a practical, integrated approach to how bank regulatory and selected macro-prudential tools interact with monetary policy to achieve price and financial stability. The empirical results contained in various chapters accompany in-depth historical analysis and counterfactual scenarios that enable proper policy evaluation and the interaction of bank regulatory, macro-prudential and monetary policy tools in South Africa. The presented evidence also identifies financial asset boom and bust episodes and the associated costly output losses. In addition, the authors explore the amplification of credit dynamics by commodity prices and sector credit re-allocation due to capital inflows shocks. The book's empirical analysis uses a wide range of statistical and econometric approaches on granular data and economic variables to derive policy implications and recommendations. This in-depth quantitative analysis includes determining inverse transmission of global liquidity, as well as the effects of capital flows, lending-rate margins, financial regulatory uncertainty, the National Credit Act, bank capital-adequacy ratios, bank loan loss provisions, loan-to-value ratios and repayment-to-income ratios on the macro-economy.

Central banks have a profound impact on financial markets, and investors struggle to keep informed about their complex policy decisions. Technological and financial developments have transformed the US Federal Reserve Bank from a financial black box into a vocal, increasingly transparent institution-and the result is such a wealth of textual data that clues to future policy decisions may be lost among the details. This book presents a solution to this problem by keeping track of those details. Schnidman and MacMillan demonstrate how the latest advances in automated text analysis, combined with the precision of domain expertise, are the keys to understanding how central banks move markets with their words. The authors outline a method to not only examine every piece of every central bank communication, but to do it in a way that is completely comprehensive and unbiased while quickly yielding hard, quantitative data that can be put to work in modern financial models.

Deposit insurance has risen rapidly over the last few years across the world. It was brought into renewed prominence with the reform of the system in the United States in the 1980s after the Savings and Loans crisis, and was accelerated by the rash of financial crises that have struck Europe, Asia and South America in recent years. The contributions to this volume strike a fascinating balance between the interest of regulators, the view of academics as to how the issues should be handled, and the interests of banks and their depositors.

Interchange fees have been the focal point for debate in the card industry, among competition authorities and policy makers, as well as in the economic literature on two-sided markets and on the regulation of market failures. This book offers insight into the economics of interchange fees. First, it explains the nature of two-sided markets/platforms/networks and elaborates on four-party schemes and on the rationale behind interchange fees according to Baxter's model and its later refinements. It also includes the debate about the optimum level of interchange fees and its determination ("tourist test"), and presents the original framework for assessing the impact of interchange fee regulatory reductions for the market participants: consumers, merchants, acquirers, issuers, and card organisations. The framework addresses three areas of concern in reference to the transmission channels of interchange fee reductions (pass-through) and the card scheme domain (triangle: payment organisation, issuer, acquirer). The book discusses the effects of regulatory interchange fee reductions in Australia, USA, Spain, and, most specifically, Poland. It will be of interest to policy makers, card and payments industry practitioners, academics, and students.

This book analyzes rapidly-growing world-class Spanish retail banks. It argues that their success is due to excellent management, clear-headed CEOs, the presence of a cluster of like-minded executives who complement each other and create a homogenous strategy pattern, and that IT systems and the regulatory environment have contributed greatly.

As competition increases, the relevance of banks and their share of the entire U.S. financial system is declining. Banks have moved from a majority to a minority position in the financial marketplace. The ultimate success or failure of banks will rest on their ability to relate meaningfully to the consuming public. Banking Redefined explores the major problems and challenges facing the banking industry and their impact on the bank franchise. Banking Redefined begins with a review of the major changes in the banking industry and how certain banks were able to expand their franchises to a SuperRegional level. It discusses risks these banks took in developing the opportunities that played major roles, and how they viewed certain situations - what some banks saw as a threat, others viewed as life saving. Banking Redefined provides an important review of in-depth commentary on the rise of the SuperRegionals, a new picture of this ever changing industry, possibilities of the future and how to make the transition, case studies of best and most notable SuperRegionals, and bank's changing franchises.

The topic of reputational crisis in the banking sector has received increasing attention from academics and practitioners. This book presents expert contributions that cover three main aspects: first, an extensive review of the literature on reputational risk in the banking sector aimed to identify the relationships between causes, effects, stakeholders, and key qualitative-quantitative variables involved during the reputational crisis of a bank; second, devising a conceptual framework for management of reputational crisis in banking, and finally, testing this framework with the results of an empirical analysis carried out by observing key variables of some known cases of reputational crisis relating to international banks and proposing case studies regarding the dynamic process of reputation management.

The banking industry extensively lobbied against Basel III and governments have been keen to delay its full implementation. Chorafas' latest book takes a well-rounded approach on Basel III's strengths and weaknesses and explains how, without deep restructuring of the global banking industry, (like Basel II) Basel III will fail.

Banks are entering a new environment. Regulation and supervision are becoming tougher, so that banks will be less likely to fail. If a bank does fail, bail-in rather than bail-out will be the new resolution regime, so that investors, not taxpayers, bear loss. Safe to Fail sums up the challenges that banks will face and how they can meet them.

"Recent years have shown an increase in development and acceptance of quantitative methods for asset and liability management strategies. This book presents state of the art quantitative decision models for three sectors: pension funds, insurance companies and banks, taking into account new regulations and the industries risks"--Provided by publisher.

London and Paris, the world's two leading financial centres in the nineteenth century, experienced differing fortunes during the twentieth century. While London remained an international financial centre, Paris' influence declined. Yet over the last twenty years deregulation, internationalization, and the advent of the single currency have reactivated their competition in ways reminiscent of their old rivalry before the First World War. This book provides a long-term perspective on the development of each centre, with special attention devoted to the pre-1914 years and to the last decades of the twentieth century, in order to contrast these two eras of globalization. The chapters include both archive-based and synthetic surveys and are written by the leading specialists of the field. This comparison between Europe's two leading capital cities will also provide new insights into two important subjects: the political economy of Britain and France in the twentieth century, and the history of international financial centres. As much as a comparison between London and Paris as international financial centres, this book is an Anglo-French comparison; in other words, it considers, through the prism of finance, several aspects of the two countries' economic, business, social, and political histories. It includes contributions from leading banking, financial, and economic historians, and will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students of Financial and Economic History, and the role of London and Paris in particular.

Italian banks and financial intermediaries are subject to extensive regulation which has evolved throughout the country's history. There has also been much change to the country's financial regulation in recent years in response to the globalization of markets and intermediaries. The Italian administrative and regulatory system is often perceived as a major obstacle to economic productivity, and some causes of this ineffectiveness are deeply rooted and date back to the Italian unification and juridical culture. This book provides an overview of the Italian regulation of banking and financial activities, and tracks the evolution of its 'economic Constitution' and market trends. It explores a range of topics within Italian regulation, including the regulation of banking activities, investment services and collective portfolio management. It examines in detail the relationship between intermediaries and customers, public offerings of financial instruments and products, public takeover bids, listed companies, insurance and reinsurance business. Among other current topics the authors discuss the link between investor protection and confidence in the financial markets; and assess the financial markets as a source of financing for companies.

This book presents a business model on how to structure the relationship between financial services and procurement. The need for new models is particularly important to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) where there is an evident difficulty in accessing credit. Due to this context, innovative solutions must be introduced. The objective of this book is to determine how innovation can support the dynamic and volatile international context and the increasingly relevant function of procurement. It is becoming more and more important to take into account complex international transactions with notably long payment terms. Organizations need to manage the best way to handle the financial relationships and the risks related to credit provision and payments. This book presents an end-to-end support to procurement, including trade finance, supply chain finance, and related payments. In addition, the enterprises need to keep sufficient liquidity levels in the short and medium term. This is a constant challenge today, with the turbulence of financial markets and a continuing climate of economic uncertainty making it harder to obtain external funding. Businesses need to optimize the working capital. This can be done through the innovative concept of procurement finance, which allows SMEs to benefit by the new vision of collaborative procurement. This book provides several practical examples of advanced procurement finance solutions. It demonstrates how the use of process improvement and technology can help in overcoming the current financially difficult situation. In addition, based on the business model presented, the integrated approach to procurement finance allows sustainable solutions which will be of interest to academics, researchers, managers, and practitioners in both buyer and vendor companies, as well as in banks and other financial institutions.

The savings and loan crisis and the banking troubles of the 1980s and early 1990s were not primarily due to fraud, deregulation, inadequate supervision, overly exuberant lending, abrupt changes in tax policies or a host of other short-term causes. All of these factors certainly exacerbated and, in some cases triggered, the problems of depository institutions. But the underlying fundamental reason for the thrift crisis and banking troubles, argues banking and financial analyst David S. Holland, was a form of excess capacity that resulted from many decades of protection from the rigors of competition and the marketplace. Dr. Holland shows that the protection was due to geographical and product limitations and a deposit insurance system that became focused on the prevention of failures of individual institutions. By 1980, the depository institutions industry was ripe for a severe culling--a culling that legislators and regulators probably could have done little to avoid, although they might have channeled and controlled it better. How the government, the industry, and the public reacted to the culling is an instructive and fascinating study in human nature for all those concerned with banking policy and regulation.

The main purpose of this volume is to organize, examine, and analyze the works of John Lansing Carey, the longest serving chief staff officer of the AICPA. Through his many articles, books, pamphlets, and editorials, he influenced and directed the thoughts of the practitioners of the time. The second purpose is to demonstrate the role of John Lansing Carey as a quiet leader among the accounting professionals and as the glue that held the AICPA together through the numerous and varied administrations. Finally, this volume examines the lasting impression that Carey's writing has made and aims to expand the body of accounting history. A biography of John Lansing Carey, it represents an important chapter in the history of the accounting profession. It organizes, examines and analyzes the works of John L. Carey. It demonstrates the role of John Lansing Carey as a leader among the accounting professionals. It examines the lasting impression that Carey's writing has made.

The book is devoted to a subject which deserves growing attention from policy makers, financial operators and academics. It is the issue of unbanking or underbanking in developed countries. With respect to this, the goal of the authors has been to devote more efforts to understanding the problem of financial exclusion in order to offer to low-moderate-income people new opportunities of accessing financial services (banking, credit and investment services).

China's banking system is central to their development. This text offers detailed analysis of the Chinese banking sector, its challenges, reasons for the present form, and the implications for reform. The book interrogates the industry's critical issues, such as financial intermediation, capital and credit risk management, and corporate governance.

"Spanish Money and Banking" provides new insights into recent advances in financial and monetary history and theory, and demonstrates the significance of Spain to modern banking, monetary, and development theory. Using a comparative approach, it brings together a substantial amount of research carried out in Spain and abroad. It also contributes to scholarly debates on aspects of monetary and banking history, topics such as free vs regulated banking, metallic vs fiduciary money, specialized vs universal banking, bank- vs market-led finance, banking repression vs liberalization, the contribution of banking and money to growth, and the role of the state in financial and economic development. It also shows how financial and monetary mismanagement contributed to the decline of Spain in the early modern era, and how the development of the banking sector later on contributed to the first stirrings of development in modern Spain, especially in the 20th century, throwing light as well on the causes of the recent European crisis and the part Spain played in it.

This book presents contributions by leading academics and practitioners from central banks to shed light on the function and impact of cash in Asian countries. It explores the impact of cash on society, the role of cash in monetary policy, and the future of cash in various monetary systems, contrasting case studies from China, Japan, Korea, and Singapore with experiences from Europe. Recently the role of cash in the economy has become a much-discussed topic in Europe, but the issue is also of considerable relevance in Asia. Singapore and South Korea, for example, are relatively advanced in the use of cashless payments for daily exchanges, while countries like Japan still largely rely on cash for a wide range of transactions. Some economists argue for the abolition of cash so as to facilitate transactions, reduce the monetary scope of criminal transactions, and expand the available options for monetary policy through negative interest rates. Opposing voices claim that such a step would reduce the freedom of individuals and lead to a greater potential for monetary repression. The abolition of cash could also significantly impact the public's monetary psychology, thereby influencing their inflation expectations, portfolio structure, saving behavior, and other important monetary parameters.

This book explores the formation and evolution of Scandinavian central banks. It begins by defining the nature of "central banking" in general, before moving on to investigate how and when it became meaningful to regard today's Scandinavian central banks as such. It also explores how Scandinavian central banks have conformed to the defined ideals of "central banks" over the last 100 years, clarifying the distinctions between commercial banks and central banks, and between central banks and departments of governments. The author shows how the outbreak of the Great War was the catalyst which fundamentally transformed the originally purely commercial banks into "central banks". The book also analyses how different the three Scandinavian central banks are, how these differences can be explained by the different political and economic circumstances surrounding their original formation, and the differences in the political environments in which they later developed.

This book aims to integrate the notions of contagion in epidemiology and contagion in financial market crises to discover why emerging markets are so susceptible to financial crises. The author first provides a brief introduction of the contagious spill-over of recent financial market crises and models the pattern of these crises. He finds that the contagion between crises in emerging markets, such as that of the crises in Russia and Brazil in 1998-1999, is explicable, despite the fact that at first sight they appear to have little in common. Finally, Friedrich Sell integrates these findings to outline a proposal for a 'new international financial architecture'. This groundbreaking book will be of interest to scholars of financial economics, emerging economies and international money and finance.

With the passage of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act and the Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act in 1994, some Americans celebrated the dawn of a new banking era. These laws, which provided some relief from regulation, represented the first revision of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. In the intervening sixty years, the U.S. banking industry had undergone dramatic changes, both domestically and internationally, and yet the laws associated with banking remained fixed and intransigent. No amount of regulatory flexibility or bankers' ingenuity was able to substitute fully for modernization of the banking laws necessary to keep pace with the revolution in the banking and financial services industries. The new legislation represented a rapid realignment of American banking laws with societal norms; as such, it generated confusion and uncertainty for many bankers and their constituents, for example, stockholders, customers, and employees. Matasar and Heiney examine public data since 1994 in an effort to fully apprise scholars and practitioners of the changes that have irrevocably altered the landscape of American banking.

The Riegle-Neal Act and the Riegle Act were the first blows to the dominance of Depression-era legislation in banking. The second was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which eliminated major portions of the Glass-Steagall Act. This study, which analyzes data from 1994 to 1999, ably captures and isolates the effects on American banking of the twin Riegle laws alone, with the noted exceptions of changed circumstances that may have resulted from other environmental factors (but not from other banking legislation). The focus here is on interstate banking experiences. Matasar and Heiney's analysis reveals the direction that changes associated with the law are likely to take and thus serves as a baseline for future research and analysis.

State guarantees commonly function as financial panacea, allowing states to consolidate banking systems and create intergovernmental funds. Rules surrounding state guarantees were relaxed during the 2007-2008 financial crisis, allowing states to use them for financing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and workers' severance payments. Despite many multi-level interventions in many areas after the financial crisis, from international treaties to EU regulations, no specific regulation has been put in place to control state guarantees. This book addresses the subject of state guarantees in the Eurozone, and questions the stability of the instruments implemented so far by states and by the European Union. Using a methodology combining law and finance, it examines the tools adopted by European institutions and Member States in the EU's evolving institutional context, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the tools themselves as well as of the new European institutional framework. It also addresses the unconventional measures adopted by the European Central Bank, its role as safeguard for European state guarantees and its interaction with the European Union and national courts. In From Saviour to Guarantor the authors suggest that the absence of specific regulatory interventions and the variety and vagueness of existing rules has resulted in state guarantees further destabilising public international finance.

For over fifty years, Eli Schwartz has inspired generations of economists through his prolific publications and dedicated in teaching. In 2008, the Martindale Center for the Study of Private Enterprise at Lehigh University invited prominent academics and practitioners-including Nobel Prize recipients, Robert Solow and Harry Markowitz, and former Chairman of the Economic Advisers to Ronald Reagan, Murray Weidenbaum-to contribute pieces that reflect their own approaches to issues that Schwartz has explored over the long span of his career. The twelve original essays cover a range of topics, including tax reform, corporate finance, fiscal policy, banking, economic growth, and globalization, representing a variety of methodologies, including economic theory, econometrics, and case analysis. The collection emphasizes the underlying connections among seemingly disparate facets of economic activity, and underscores the tremendous influence of Schwartz on economic analysis, policy, and leadership today.