Central bank independence is a key issue for political and monetary authorities in many countries. In Institutions and Monetary Policy, Eric Schaling looks at the impact of different central banks on price stability and macroeconomic performance, and their optimal degree of legislative independence.After introducing and surveying the rules versus discretion debate in monetary policy, Eric Schaling then investigates the relationship between domestic monetary institutions and macroeconomic performance. The author compares central bank independence in twelve industrial countries - Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden and Switzerland - and prepares an index of his results. The relationship between central bank independence, inflation and output growth is extensively discussed and a series of propositions tested for the same set of countries over the period from 1972 to 1991. Normative issues are investigated in the later part of the book including the optimal degree of central bank independence in relation to, first, the inflation rate and, second, wage formation in a totally unionized economy. Institutions and Monetary Policy will be welcomed by scholars and policymakers concerned with the increasingly important role of institutions in monetary policy and the relation between degrees of central bank independence and political and economic outcomes.

Banking, Politics and Global Finance presents an innovative, micro-political examination of the US banking system's response to the ongoing globalization of financial markets. This approach contrasts sharply with earlier studies which have emphasized the macro-structural aspects of politics through concentrating on elements of stability and consistency in the policy responses by advanced industrial countries to external economic pressures. By micro-political analysis of policy making, this book reveals a multitude of changes in the interests, coalitions and power constellations among private and public sector actors and institutions in the US financial system, in the absence of any macrostructural adjustment. These changes have opened alternative channels for policy making leading to substantial adjustments in the regulatory framework governing US financial markets. Using detailed discussion of the unsuccessful attempts to repeal the law that separates commercial from investment banking - the Glass-Steagall Act - and the successful raising of the capital standards of US commercial banks, Dr Reinicke's book also explains why the same policy network can respond very differently to an external economic challenge - a phenomenon usually neglected in the literature on comparative political economy.

With twenty-one years' experience in the investment bond business, Raymond uses his experience in this study to demonstrate the key issues related to state, county, municipal and district bonds through the use of the most recent data of the time. Originally published in 1923, this version was republished in 1936 to ensure that all figures and arguments were up-to-date. This title will be of interest to students of Business, Economics and Finance.

The recent banking crisis has brought into question the business model used by most large banks. This collection of essays explores the success of 'alternative banks' - savings banks, cooperative banks and development banks, using case studies from around the world and discussion of both the historical and theoretical context of banking practices.

This study is the first in a decade to provide an overview of banking in Brazil. It is argued that the big three federal banks have long provided essential policy alternatives and, since the liberalization of the industry in the 1990s, have realized competitive advantages over private and foreign banks.

In the early 1990s, the First National Bank of Keystone in West Virginia began buying and securitizing subprime mortgages from all over the country, and quickly grew from a tiny bank with just $100 million in assets to over $1.1 billion. For three years, it was listed as the most profitable large community bank in the country. It was all a fraud. All of the securitization deals the bank entered into lost money. To hide that fact, bank insiders started cooking the books, and concealing that they were also embezzling millions of dollars from the bank. This was all hidden from the bank's attorneys and auditors, federal bank examiners, and even the board of directors of the bank. To keep the examiners at bay, the bank insiders did everything possible to avoid giving them access to documents they were entitled to see, documents they knew would sink their scheme. The head of the bank even went so far as to bury four large truckloads of documents in a ditch on her ranch. Robert S. Pasley explores the failure of the First National Bank of Keystone, the intrigue involved, and the lessons that could have been learned-and still can be learned-about how banks operate, how federal banking regulators supervise financial institutions, how agencies interact with one another, and how such failures can be avoided in the future.

This book addresses issues in the current literature on corporate finance using historical evidence. In particular it looks at the role of universal banks in relaxing the credit constraints of firms, supervising managers and stabilizing share prices. The key issues is whether the Anglo-American asset based financing is more efective than the main-bank approach used in Germany and Japan. Earlier studies have found that firms with a close relationship with a major bank have high market value compared to book value, although it is difficult to determine whether this is cause or effect

The year-long consultations on Basel II mirror the international popularity of capital requirements as a regulatory instrument. Yet, the impact of capital requirements on banks' behavior is not fully understood. The aim of this study is to contribute to this understanding.

Since 2000, the Gulf Coast states - Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida - have experienced a series of hurricanes, multiple floods and severe storms, and one oil spill. These disasters have not only been numerous but also devastating. Response to and recovery from these unprecedented disasters has been fraught with missteps in management. In efforts to avoid similar failures in the future, government agencies and policy practitioners have looked to recast emergency management, and community resilience has emerged as a way for to better prevent, manage, and recover from these disasters. How is disaster resilience perceived by local government officials and translated into their disaster response and recovery efforts? Ashley D. Ross systematically explores and measures disaster resilience across the Gulf Coast to gain a better understanding of how resilience in concept is translated into disaster management practices, particularly on the local government level. In doing so, she presents disaster resilience theory to the Gulf Coast using existing data to create county-level baseline indicators of Gulf Coast disaster resilience and an original survey of county emergency managers and elected municipal officials in 60 counties and 120 municipalities across the Gulf States. The findings of the original survey measure the disaster resilience perceptions held by local government officials, which are examined to identify commonalities and differences across the set of cases. Additional analyses compare these perceptions to objective baseline indicators of disaster resilience to assess how perceptions align with resilience realities. Local Disaster Resilience not only fills a critical gap in the literature by applying existing theories and models to a region that has experienced the worst disasters the United States has faced in the past decade, but it can also be used as a tool to advance our knowledge of disasters in an interdisciplinary manner.

To provide an understanding of financial globalization from a historical point of view, this book sheds light on international banking in Asia before World War II. International banking facilitated the relationship between Asian economic development and international financial centres. Focusing on the origins of a wide variety of banks not just from Europe but beyond Europe, such as the United States and Asia, particularly Japan and China, this book comprehensively explores competition and collaboration among international banks in Asia. It clarifies international banking's role of integrating the global market and the impact on both ends of the global economy-the international financial centres in the developed world and the developing economies in Asia. Economic development in Asia from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s as a part of the globalizing economy mirrors Asia's current role as the global economic-growth powerhouse. This book focuses on the two key similarities between Asia's past and present: intra-Asian relationships and the relationship between Asia and developed economies, namely, Europe, the United States, and Japan. Getting into the heart of the relationships, i.e., finance, this book presents a sophisticated and realistic image of the tangled network of international economic relations, distinguished from the conventional image of a one-sided advantage or disadvantage among involved nations.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Investment Banks, Hedge Funds, and Private Equity, Fourth Edition provides a real-world view of this fast-evolving field, reviewing and analyzing recent innovations and developments. This reference captures the actual work of bankers and professional investors, providing readers with templates for real transactions and insight on how investment banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms provide services to each other while creating opportunities for corporations and investors to raise capital, invest, hedge, finance, acquire, divest, and risk manage. For each type of institution, the business model, organizational structure, products, challenges, regulatory issues, and profit-making opportunities are explained. In addition, specific transactions are analyzed to make clear how advisory services, financings, investments, and trades produce profits or losses, and which types of risks are most commonly taken by each type of institution. Importantly, the linkage of investment banks, hedge funds, and private equity to corporations, governments, and individuals is described, enabling the reader to more clearly understand how these organizations impact them and how their products and services can be best utilized.

In the early 1990s, the First National Bank of Keystone in West Virginia began buying and securitizing subprime mortgages from all over the country, and quickly grew from a tiny bank with just $100 million in assets to over $1.1 billion. For three years, it was listed as the most profitable large community bank in the country. It was all a fraud. All of the securitization deals the bank entered into lost money. To hide that fact, bank insiders started cooking the books, and concealing that they were also embezzling millions of dollars from the bank. This was all hidden from the bank's attorneys and auditors, federal bank examiners, and even the board of directors of the bank. To keep the examiners at bay, the bank insiders did everything possible to avoid giving them access to documents they were entitled to see, documents they knew would sink their scheme. The head of the bank even went so far as to bury four large truckloads of documents in a ditch on her ranch. Robert S. Pasley explores the failure of the First National Bank of Keystone, the intrigue involved, and the lessons that could have been learned-and still can be learned-about how banks operate, how federal banking regulators supervise financial institutions, how agencies interact with one another, and how such failures can be avoided in the future.

Modern Money and the Rise and Fall of Capitalist Finance examines the true nature of modern money and seeks ideas for an alternative economic system for a just society. This book suggests that adopting the ideas and institutions of a trust allowed personae to be combined with creditor-debtor relations and, by doing so, led to the evolution of modern money. This also helps explain why modern banking arose in England rather than continental Europe, by conceptualizing modern money as a trust and investigating the inseparable relationship between personae and modern money, because it is more than creditor-debtor relations - it takes the form of a trust. In explaining how the capitalist credit-money economy differs from previous economies, this book is a significant contribution to the literature on modern money, heterodox economics and the philosophy of economics and finance.

In the collective psyche, a financier is a capitalist. In managerial capitalism, the notion of the 'manager' emerged, and the role of the manager was distinct from the role of the 'owner'. Financial capitalism is similarly underpinned by financiers who are not the holders of the financial assets they buy, sell, trade or advise upon. Finance at Work explores the world of financiers, be they finance-oriented CEOs, CFOs, financial journalists, mergers and acquisitions' advisors or wealth managers. Part I investigates the professional trajectories of members of corporate boards and financialisation as the dissemination of financial logic outside its primary 'iron cage'; Part II responds by studying financiers at work within financial occupations or financial operations involving external actors; while Part III pursues the issue of financial boundaries by seeking out the way financial logic crosses these boundaries. Part IV takes back the hypothesis of differentiations within finance presented in Part I, and analyses the internal boundaries of asset management, wealth management and leveraged buyout (LBO) acquisitions. This book is essential reading for researchers and academics within the field of finance who aim to understand the 'spread of finance' in contemporary societies.

Understanding Credit Derivatives and Related Instruments, Second Edition is an intuitive, rigorous overview that links the practices of valuing and trading credit derivatives with academic theory. Rather than presenting highly technical explorations, the book offers summaries of major subjects and the principal perspectives associated with them. The book's centerpiece is pricing and valuation issues, especially valuation tools and their uses in credit models. Five new chapters cover practices that have become commonplace as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, including standardized premiums and upfront payments. Analyses of regulatory responses to the crisis for the credit derivatives market (Basel III, Dodd-Frank, etc.) include all the necessary statistical and mathematical background for readers to easily follow the pricing topics. Every reader familiar with mid-level mathematics who wants to understand the functioning of the derivatives markets (in both practical and academic contexts) can fully satisfy his or her interests with the comprehensive assessments in this book.

Based on both theoretical and empirical approaches, the essays in this volume emphasise the role of ethics in a globalized economy.

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Banking and finance play a fundamental role in public policy and economic performance as well as in all forms of commerce and industry. They are crucial in determining whether society - from governments to individual consumers - succeeds in following an environmentally sustainable path. However, those working in the financial sector are largely unaware of the rationale and pressures for sustainable development and its bearing on their work, while those in the relevant research and policy areas commonly overlook how vital the financial sector is for progress. Marcel Jeucken sets out to rectify this state of affairs, in a style which is accessible to those with no experience of environmental finance issues. He provides a comprehensive account of their interdependence: why the financial sector is crucial to achieving sustainability and why the triple bottom line of commercial, environmental and social success points the way forward for banking. From a systematic assessment of major banks around the world, he presents a comprehensive account of current best practice, an analysis of the differences in approach and performance, and recommendations of actions and policies for improved performance that will contribute to sustainable development.

The 2008 financial crisis has severely shaken confidence in liberal economic theory and policy. However, the sharply divergent experiences of the six Anglo-Saxon 'liberal market economies' (LMEs) suggest that the reality is not so simple. This book traces the evolution of liberal capitalism, from its rebirth amidst the challenges of the 1970s to its role in the genesis of the 2008 crisis - and debates the assumptions underpinning the liberal capitalist paradigm. Close examination reveals variety within liberal capitalism. Not only was there the familiar, "hands off" libertarian approach adopted by the US, UK and Ireland, but more bounded, better regulated and apparently more stable varieties of economic liberalism also emerged, through the more pragmatic approach taken by Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The evidence is compelling. Whereas the American, British and Irish financial systems were severely damaged by the crisis, those of Canada, Australia and New Zealand proved more robust. This volume explores the degree to which these divergent experiences were a result of better and more intensive supervision, differences in business or political culture, broader commitment to social norms, and the pace of liberalisation. Detailed comparative case studies reveal fundamental differences in the economic and political environments in which economic liberalisation took place, in approaches to finance and in the degree to which it was seen to be an engine for growth. The book concludes that this had a major influence on the evolving economic and financial systems, and consequently, their relative resilience when confronted with the challenges of the 2008 crisis.

With original archival documents and interviews from the US and Europe, Michelle Frasher brings the reader into the negotiating room with American, German, and French officials as they confronted the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system and made decisions that affected the course of European integration and the contemporary neoliberal order. She identifies crisis as the catalyst for change in international monetary policies, but argues that the causes of crisis originated from a multitude of factors such as market speculation, American hegemony, institutional flaws, and ideational conflicts among the leaders themselves. Far from a planned and consensual process, this book shows that the transformation to neoliberalism was riddled with discord and fret with trial and error. She argues that the resulting currency regime allowed governments to entrench themselves in national interests and facilitated the "marketization" of the state, where states have became both clients and participants in the financialized global economy-to the detriment of international stability. Frasher's is the first work to connect the 1960s and 1970s to the difficulties of inter-state and inter-market cooperation that have plagued the system in the last decades, and it puts the 2008 debacle into historical perspective.

Public credit was controversial in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. It entailed new ways of thinking about the individual in relation to the State and was for many reasons a site of cultural negotiation and debate. At the same time, it required commitment from participants in order to function. Some of the debates relating to public credit, whose success was tied up in the way it was represented, find their way into contemporary fiction - in particular the eighteenth-century novel. This book reads eighteenth-century fiction alongside works of political economy in order to offer a new perspective on credible commitment and the rise of a credit economy facilitated by public credit. Works by authors such as Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Frances Burney are explored alongside lesser-known fictional texts, including some early it-narratives and novels of sensibility, to give a fully rounded view of the perception of public credit within England and its wider cultural and social implications. Strategies for representing public credit, the book argues, can be seen as contributing to the development of the English novel, a type of fiction whose emphasis on the individual can also be read as helping to produce a certain type of person, the modern financial subject. This interdisciplinary book draws from economic history and literary/cultural studies in order to make connections between the development of finance and an important facet of modern Western culture, the novel.

In Contemporary Financial Intermediation, Third Edition, Greenbaum, Thakor and Boot offer a distinctive approach to financial markets and institutions, presenting an integrated portrait that puts information at the core. Instead of simply naming and describing markets, regulations, and institutions as competing books do, the authors explore the endless subtlety and plasticity of financial institutions and credit markets. This edition has six new chapters and increased, enhanced pedagogical supplements. The book is ideal for anyone working in the financial sector, presenting professionals with a comprehensive understanding of the reasons why markets, institutions, and regulators act as they do. Readers will find an unmatched, thorough discussion of the world's financial markets and how they function.

China's shadow banking has been a top issue in the past few years. Scholars, policymakers, and professionals around the world are seeking deeper insight into the subject, and the authors had unique insight into the sector through their positions high up in the regulatory apparatus. "Regulating China's Shadow Banks" focuses on the regulation of shadow banks in China and provides crucial information to demystify China's shadow banking and associated regulatory challenges. This book defines "shadow banking" in the Chinese context, analyzes the impact of shadow banking on the Chinese economy, includes a full-scale analysis on the current status of Chinese financial regulation, and provides valuable advice on the regulation of China's shadow banks.

From an insider's position, Sir Paul Newall tells the story of Japan's links with the City of London and explains why the City was first chosen by Japan as the focal point for its overseas financial investment. This account draws upon the author's close contact with Japanese governmental and financial authorities both in the UK and Japan itself. It documents the evolution and development of this relationship, from the earliest beginnings of Japanese financial contact in the 1860s. Important to economic and financial historians, this account should also be of particular value to those dealing with Japanese companies and financial institutions, as well as to those Japanese who are working, or have worked in the City. First published in 1996, this title is part of the Bloomsbury Academic Collections series.