Predicting foreign exchange rates has presented a long-standing challenge for economists. However, the recent advances in computational techniques, statistical methods, newer datasets on emerging market currencies, etc., offer some hope. While we are still unable to beat a driftless random walk model, there has been serious progress in the field. This book provides an in-depth assessment of the use of novel statistical approaches and machine learning tools in predicting foreign exchange rate movement. First, it offers a historical account of how exchange rate regimes have evolved over time, which is critical to understanding turning points in a historical time series. It then presents an overview of the previous attempts at modeling exchange rates, and how different methods fared during this process. At the core sections of the book, the author examines the time series characteristics of exchange rates and how contemporary statistics and machine learning can be useful in improving predictive power, compared to previous methods used. Exchange rate determination is an active research area, and this book will appeal to graduate-level students of international economics, international finance, open economy macroeconomics, and management. The book is written in a clear, engaging, and straightforward way, and will greatly improve access to this much-needed knowledge in the field.

This book collects together the basic documents of an approach to the theory and policy of the balance of payments developed in the 1970s. The approach marked a return to the historical traditions of international monetary theory after some thirty years of departure from them - a departure occasioned by the international collapse of the 1930s, the Keynesian Revolution and a long period of war and post-war reconstruction in which the international monetary system was fragmented by exchange controls, currency inconvertibility and controls over international trade and capital movements.

An internationally acknowledged authority on all aspects of the theory of international trade and payments, this book collects Harry Johnson's contributions to the study of international trade, including a critique of the theory of effective protection. The book discusses: the integration of income distribution and other aspects of the economy into the positive theory of tariffs the issues raised by the use of tariffs to promote economic development the implications of distortions of various kinds in the working of competition for tariff theory and policy the costs of protection the implications of effective protection for world economic development and the economic effects of trade preferences the question of free trade and the extent to which it requires the harmonization other aspects of economic policy.

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) provide a public good: they provide income-creating financial services to un-bankable people. If MFIs create and deepen markets where none existed before, there may be a case for public support. While subsidies are generally not favorably seen in financial sector development, being difficult to target and possibly distorting the local financial market, there may be situations where the net social benefits of micro-finance may exceed those of not doing anything and of alternative anti-poverty programs. Under such circumstances longer-term public support may be justifiable. This book is based on a study of forty-five MFIs carried out by ILO, in partnership with the Universities of Geneva and Cambridge. The application of factor analysis and cluster analysis shows that MFIs form clusters in terms of social and performance. Within each cluster there is one institution that is most efficient on both scores. Public support should ensure that the relative efficiency of MFIs is enhanced, it should not prod MFIs to modify their mission and position between poverty outreach and profitability.

This book examines four aspects of Malaysian consumers' financial vulnerabilities. First, it discusses the issue of over-indebtedness due to excessive reliance on consumer financing. Second, the book investigates why Malaysians are ill-prepared for their golden years in terms of retirement planning and savings. Third, it delves into the problem of financial fraud victimisation among Malaysian consumers. Fourth, the book analyses the reasons why Malaysians are underinsured despite the distinct benefits of life insurance. Drawing on secondary data from government agencies such as Bank Negara Malaysia, Employees' Provident Fund, Royal Malaysian Police and the Department of Statistics Malaysia, each chapter presents statistical trends reflecting the four financial vulnerabilities. In-depth analyses of the literature reveal three broad psychological domains (cognition, motivation, and disposition) and specific psychological factors (e.g. over-confidence, self-control, social norms, and financial literacy) that significantly influence consumers' financial decisions. The four financial vulnerabilities investigated in this book directly address the strategic outcomes of the Malaysian National Strategy for Financial Literacy 2019-2023 (MNSFL), a five-year plan to elevate the financial literacy of Malaysians. Finally, the book presents strategic recommendations that are believed to be useful guidelines for relevant policymakers to promote positive financial behaviours and rational attitudes among consumers. It will be a useful resource for policymakers and researchers interested in economic psychology and behavioural finance.

Walter Bagehot noticed once that "John Bull can stand many things, but he cannot stand two per cent." Well, for several years, he has had to stand interest rates well below that, in some countries even below zero. However, despite this sacrifice, the economic recovery from the Great Recession has been disappointingly weak. This book's aim is to answer this question. The central thesis of the book is that the standard understanding of the monetary transmission mechanism is flawed. That understanding adopts erroneous assumptions-such as, that low interest rates always stimulate economic growth by boosting the credit supply, investment, and consumption-and does not fully take into account several unintended channels of monetary policy, such as risk-taking, high level of debt, or zombification of the economy. In other words, the effectiveness of monetary policy is limited during economic downturns accompanied by the debt overhang and the balance sheet recession, and generates negative effects, which can make the policy counterproductive. The author provides a thorough analysis of the issues related to the interest rates in the conduct of monetary policy, such as the risk-taking channel of monetary policy, the portfolio-balance channel and the wealth effect, zombie firms in the economy, the misallocation of resources, as well as the neutral interest rate targeting and the difference between the neutral and natural interest rate and the negative interest rate policy. The book is written in an accessible and engaging manner and will be a valuable resource for scholars of monetary economics as well as readers interested in (unconventional) monetary policy.

Cryptocurrencies have had a profound effect on financial markets worldwide. This edited book aims to explore the economic implications of the use of cryptocurrencies. Drawing from chapter contributors from around the world, the book will be a valuable resource on the economics of cryptocurrencies. The intended audience is composed of academics, corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, government leaders, consultants and policy makers worldwide. Over the past few years, the topic of cryptocurrencies has gained global attention and has been the subject of discussion in various news media, in policy-making bodies and government entities, and in financial institutions, classrooms and boardrooms. Despite widespread interest, much remains unknown on what the economic implications of cryptocurrencies are. This book enhances the reader's understanding of cryptocurrencies, its impact on industry and its implications on the political and economic environment. Drawing from chapter contributions from leading academics and thought leaders from around the world, this book is the definitive guide on the economics of cryptocurrencies. There is scarcity of well conceived, academically grounded literature on the impact of cryptocurrencies on industry, politics and economics. This pioneering book provides up-to-date and in-depth analysis on the subject. The book will be appealing to academic communities, business professionals and entrepreneurs in their quest for better understanding the challenges and opportunities brought about by cryptocurrencies. Consultants, government officials and policy makers will find the information helpful in defining strategic pathways into the future.

The existence of fiat currencies has long been cited as one of the major contributing factors to the challenges facing contemporary economies, and the current monetary system is not only a key source of exorable increases in interest rates but also a principal cause of inflation and decline in the value of money in many countries. The editors argue that an Islamic monetary system, with its specific money concepts, interest-free financial institutions, and monetary policy embedded in real growth, provides a solution to this conundrum. Contributions from many world-renowned experts consider a wide array of topics, ranging from the theoretical concepts of money and banking in conventional and Islamic economics to the historical journey of money from precious metals to plastic money and digital currency today. The book outlines the problems that sprout from interest-based banking and multiple debt structures. It then mirrors the Islamic concepts of money as well as idiosyncrasies of its monetary policy. Supported with meticulous research and empirical evidence, the book demonstrates the efficacy of Islamic monetary system in delivering real growth along with equitable distribution of wealth and prosperity in the economy. It additionally acquaints the readers with juristic debates about money and monetary policy. This is essential reading for both students and researchers in Islamic economics, banking, and finance, expertly promoting a fair and just economic system that emerges as a result of interest-free banking and monetary policy based on Islamic principles.

There are many studies confirming the relationship between financial systems and economic development, but there are few which examine the degree to which financial systems a) impact the quality of information, b) influence sound corporate governance, c) ensure effective mechanisms of risk management, d) mobilize savings and f) facilitate trade. In the context of sustainability, there should also be a line of inquiry into how a particular financial system influences the assurance and implementation of sustainable development principles and goals. This book delivers a methodological approach to designing and assessing sustainable financial systems. It provides an original contribution by prioritizing ESG factors in the decision-making process of financial institutions and identifying their impact on sustainable financial systems. The author argues that to achieve financial stability, it is necessary to have in place mechanisms designed to prevent financial problems from becoming systemic and/or threatening the stability of the financial and economic system, while maintaining (or not undermining) the economy's ability to sustain growth and perform its other functions. The book primarily takes a simulation and experimental approach. It is the first book to take such a comprehensive look at sustainable financial systems as opposed to sustainable finance in general. It will appeal to academics, students and researchers in the fields of economics, finance and banking, business, management and political and social sciences.

The Chinese financial sector, despite having been developed at a much later stage compared with other developed nations, has achieved substantial progresses over the past decades. By the end of 2014, a total of 16 commercial banks had been listed on the stock exchanges, exerting strong impact onto the market indices and contributing significantly to the country's sustained economic growth. This book reviews the evolution of the Chinese financial system, examining the effectiveness of reform strategies made by the government over the last ten years. The first chapter offers a comprehensive review of the development of the Chinese banking sector and the state-owned banks (SOBs). The second chapter focuses on the efficiency of the Chinese banking sector. Employing data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), the author tests the change of efficiency within the Chinese banking sector over the past decade. It also looks at the strategy adopted by the Chinese government as the final attempt in reforming its troublesome SOBs and the effectiveness of such a reform strategy. The next chapter examines the corporate governance practise of the Chinese commercial banks, and the author follows by investigating the effect of the 2007 US credit crunch on Chinese banks and the country's wider economy. Other chapters survey the influence of foreign entry to the Chinese domestic banking sector, and the development of shadow banking in China. The author concludes by discussing the role of the central bank, namely the People's Bank of China (PBOC), and its role in implementing effective policies to promote economic growth.

This book examines the role of Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest commercial bank, during the Nazi dictatorship, and asks how the bank changed and accommodated to a transition from democracy and a market economy to dictatorship and a planned economy. Set against the background of the world depression and the German banking crisis of 1931, the book looks at the restructuring of German banking and offers new material on the bank's expansion in central and eastern Europe. As well as summarizing recent research on the bank's controversial role in gold transactions and the financing of the construction of Auschwitz, the book also examines the role played by particular personalities in the development of the bank, such as Emil Georg von Strauss and Hermann Abs.

This volume presents current developments in the fields of banking and finance from an international perspective. Featuring contributions from the 5th International Conference on Banking and Finance Perspectives (ICBFP), this volume serves as a valuable forum for discussing current issues and trends in the banking and financial sectors, especially in light of the global economic challenges triggered by financial institutions. Using the latest theoretical models, new perspectives are brought to topics such as the global financial markets, international banking and finance, microfinance, fintech, and corporate finance. Offering an opportunity to explore the challenges of a rapidly changing industry, this volume will be of interest to academics, policy makers, and scholars in the fields of banking, insurance, and finance.

This is an open access book. This book is an integration of keynote speeches, lectures, and related teaching materials during the five years of the "Central Bank Policy Mix: Issues, Challenges and Policy Responses" flagship program of the BI Institute, the learning and research centre of Bank Indonesia. The book examines the interactions among central bank policies including monetary policy, exchange rate policy, macroprudential policy, and capital flow management and also elaborates on modeling issues and quantitative analysis of the interaction between macroeconomic variables and policy instruments.

The failure on the part of Banks to enforce rigorous self regulation has precipitated a deep and prolonged global recession. This book provides a comprehensive review of the principles, institutions and experience of banking and financial regulation. The origins and resolution of the credit crisis are explored in depth.
This volume offers extensive coverage of subjects on the regulation of banks and securities markets.It provides tools to help illustrate the principles of regulation, and presents real examples of the credit crunch. The analysis of functions of financial institutions demonstrates how structures, such as the government, react to innovations such as securitization. The authors of this volume, both prominent experts in this field, illustrate how regulatory reform will provide a balance between financial stability and economic growth, whilst strengthening the recovery of the economy and ultimately leading to future prosperity.
This book is indispensable reading for all interested in international banking and finance, macroeconomics and capital market regulation, and forinstitutions, professionals, practitioners, postgraduates and students engaged in international financial business.

Extraordinary growth of the financial relative to the nonfinancial sector has marked the development of mature capitalism during the last four decades. The changing balance between the two sectors has altered the outlook of the economy and facilitated the spread of financial concerns, practices, and outlooks across society. The result has been the gradual transformation of contemporary capitalism - namely, its financialization since the late 1970s. There are similarities between the Marxian, the Post-Keynesian and other heterodox approaches to analyzing the profound changes in money and finance in the global economy since the 1980s. Prominent among them is a common focus on financialization but also on the limits of monetary policy, the transformation of banking, the tendency to crisis related to financial excess, and the problematic role of neoliberalism in finance. Furthermore, the complexity of the interrelationship between finance and the rest of the economy has increased since the great crisis of 2007-9. This book tackles several of these developments as well as engaging in debate among different currents of heterodox economics. The chapters in this book were originally published in The Japanese Political Economy.

The Grameen Bank of Bangladesh has successfully lent small sums to poor women for income generation. This empirical study examines the programme's long-term influence and argues that credit alone can create fundamental change, even in an environment distinctly hostile to women's autonomy.

This book explores the simultaneous Asianisation and feminisation of mid-level management in the financial services sector in world and global cities in the Asia-Pacific. Chan draws on 50 in-depth interviews with ethnically Chinese female professionals working in middle or upper management positions in Sydney, Hong Kong, Shanghai and four other cities in Australia and China. She analyses the interplay between geographical location, gender and career mobility. Growing numbers of transnational Chinese live and work in major cities in developed countries. In this context, a new social, economic ecosystem is being created for and by female professionals working in an elite sector of the service industry across the Asia-Pacific region. Chan examines the nature of this ecosystem through an examination of the lives and work of such women - their role in forming multinational networks in financial service firms, their collective work situation, their daily challenges, and their coping strategies in the workplace and at home. A compelling comparative study, which will be of great interest to scholars and students looking at the role of gender and ethnicity in globalisation.

This is the first comprehensive study of loans and debts in Central European countries in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. It outlines the issues of debts and loans in the Czech lands, Poland and Hungary, with respect to the influence of Austria and Germany. It focuses on the role of loans and debts in medieval and early modern society, credit markets in these countries, the mechanism of lending and borrowing, forms of credit, availability of loans, frequency of credits dealings, range of lending business, and last, but not least, the financial relationships inside the social classes and between them. The research presented in the book is based on a wide range of resources including credit contracts and agreements, evidence of loans and debts of courts, accounting of nobility, towns, churches and guilds, merchant diaries and Jewish registers, as well as other financial records. It covers a wide range of historical disciplines including economic and financial history, social history, the history of economic thought as well as the history of everyday life. It also contains a wealth of case studies, which offer, for the first time in English, a comprehensive and representative sample of the most up-to-date Central European research on the history of loans and debts and serves as a basis for a comparison with the other parts of Europe during the same period. The book is designed primarily for postgraduates, researchers and academics in financial, economic and historical sciences but will also be a valuable resource for students of business schools.

This book examines the regulatory framework, regulatory objectives, regulatory logics, regulatory instruments, regulatory failures, and regulatory responses in China's financial market after the global financial crisis. The book provides an in-depth analysis of China's contemporary financial regulatory system, focusing on risks, regulation, and policies in practice. By drawing on public and private interest theories relating to financial regulation, the book contends that the controlled development of the banking sector, and the financial sector generally, has transformed China's banks into more market-oriented institutions and increased public sector growth. However, China's financial market and financial regulation have some inherent weaknesses and deficiencies. This book also offers insights into how this can be improved or adapted to minimize systemic risks in China's financial sector. This book tries to prove that financial regulation is not just a vehicle for maintaining efficient financial markets but a primary tool through which the Chinese government achieves its political and economic objectives. More fundamentally, according to the law and finance theory, strong market and vibrant judicial systems are needed to further modernize China's financial markets and market economy. The book will be a useful reference for anyone interested in learning from the Chinese experience.

Since the financial crisis of 2008-09, central bankers around the world have been forced to abandon conventional monetary policy tools in favour of unconventional policies such as quantitative easing, forward guidance, lowering the interest rate paid on bank reserves into negative territory, and pushing up prices of government bonds. Having faced a crisis in its banking sector nearly a decade earlier, Japan was a pioneer in the use of many of these tools. Unconventional Monetary Policy and Financial Stability critically assesses the measures used by Japan and examines what they have meant for the theory and practice of economic policy. The book shows how in practice unconventional monetary policy has worked through its impact on the financial markets. The text aims to generate an understanding of why such measures were introduced and how the Japanese system has subsequently changed regarding aspects such as governance and corporate balance sheets. It provides a comprehensive study of developments in Japanese money markets with the intent to understand the impact of policy on the debt structures that appear to have caused Japan's deflation. The topics covered range from central bank communication and policymaking to international financial markets and bank balance sheets. This text is of great interest to students and scholars of banking, international finance, financial markets, political economy, and the Japanese economy.

Since the start of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, research on central banking has gained momentum due to unusual levels of central bank activism and unconventional monetary policy measures in many countries. While these policies drew significant attention to advanced economy central banks, there has been much less academic focus on central banking in emerging economies. This book extends the research on the political economy of central banking by focusing on the emerging economies in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the European periphery. Central banks are at the heart of economic policymaking, and their decisions have a significant impact on the social and economic well-being of citizens. Adopting an interdisciplinary political economy perspective, the contributions in this book explore the reciprocal relations between politics, economics, and central banks, and how the global and domestic political economy contexts influence central bank practices. The chapters employ diverse theoretical perspectives such as institutional and organizational theory, developmental state resource dependency, and gender studies, drawing on disciplines ranging from politics, international relations, public policy, management, finance, and sociology. This book will appeal to academics and students of central banking, political economy, and emerging economies, as well as professionals and policymakers engaged with central banks, monetary policy, and economic development.

Historians of our financial system will record this as an age of deregulation and bank mergers. Deregulation, a cornerstone of President Reagan's Administration, resulted in federal and state legislation that contributed to increased competition for financial services and increased merger activity. During the 1981-1986 period, there were 2,139 mergers in banking and finance, accounting for 16 percent of total merger activity.l More mergers occurred in banking and finance than in any other industry. Because of these bank mergers, there are vast amounts of data avail able for scholarly research. This book presents some results of that research which will be of interest to academics, bankers, investors, legislators, and regulators. The book consists of ten articles, and it is divided into three parts. Part 1: National and Regional Bank Mergers gives a broad perspective of merger activity. The first article by Peter S. Rose compared the growth of bank holding companies that merged with those that did not merge. One conclusion of his study was that banks planning mergers tended to be aggressively managed and were often beset by problems, such as low profitability or declining loan quality. Mergers were one solution to their problems. But he found no solid evidence that mergers resulted in greater profitability or reduced risk. He also observed that acquiring banks did not seem to grow faster than those choosing not to merge."

Interest in Financial Services Marketing has grown hugely over the last few decades, particularly since the financial crisis, which scarred the industry and its relationship with customers. It reflects the importance of the financial services industry to the economies of every nation and the realisation that the consumption and marketing of financial services differs from that of tangible goods and indeed many other intangible services. This book is therefore a timely and much needed comprehensive compendium that reflects the development and maturation of the research domain, and pulls together, in a single volume, the current state of thinking and debate. The events associated with the financial crisis have highlighted that there is a need for banks and other financial institutions to understand how to rebuild trust and confidence, improve relationships and derive value from the marketing process. Edited by an international team of experts, this book will provide the latest thinking on how to manage such challenges and will be vital reading for students and lecturers in financial services marketing, policy makers and practitioners.