The U.S. economy lost the first decade of the twenty-first century to an ill-conceived boom and subsequent bust. It is in danger of losing another decade to the stagnation of an incomplete recovery. How did this happen? Read this lucid explanation of the origins and long-term effects of the recent financial crisis, drawn in historical and comparative perspective by two leading political economists.

By 2008 the United States had become the biggest international borrower in world history, with more than two-thirds of its $6 trillion federal debt in foreign hands. The proportion of foreign loans to the size of the economy put the United States in league with Mexico, Indonesia, and other third-world debtor nations. The massive inflow of foreign funds financed the booms in housing prices and consumer spending that fueled the economy until the collapse of late 2008. This was the most serious international economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Menzie Chinn and Jeffry Frieden explain the political and economic roots of this crisis as well as its long-term effects. They explore the political strategies behind the Bush administration s policy of funding massive deficits with foreign borrowing. They show that the crisis was foreseen by many and was avoidable through appropriate policy measures. They examine the continuing impact of our huge debt on the continuing slow recovery from the recession. Lost Decades will long be regarded as the standard account of the crisis and its aftermath."

The current dynamics of world economy show remarkable changes in the socio-economics of credit provision and entrepreneurship. If the emergence of the sharing economy is fostering innovative models of collaborative agency, networking and venture business, economic actors are also looking for a more sustainable development, able to foster profitability as well as community welfare. This book investigates Islamic social finance as a paramount example of this economy under change, where the balance between economic efficiency and social impact is contributing to the transformation of the market from an exchange- to a community-oriented institution. The collected essays analyse the social dimension of entrepreneurship from an Islamic perspective, highlighting the extent to which the rationales of "sharing," distribution and cooperation, affect the conceptualization of the market in Islam as a place of "shared prosperity." Moving from the conceptual "roots" of this paradigm to its operative "branches," the contributing authors also connect the most recent trends in the financial market to Shari'ah-based strategies for community welfare, hence exploring the applications of Islamic social finance from the sharing economy, FinTech and crowdfunding to microcredit, waqf, zakat, sukuk and green investments. An illuminating reference for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers dealing with the challenges of a global market where not only is diversity being perceived as a value to be fostered, but also as an important opportunity for a more inclusive economy for everybody.

Taking a data-driven approach, A Course on Statistics for Finance presents statistical methods for financial investment analysis. The author introduces regression analysis, time series analysis, and multivariate analysis step by step using models and methods from finance. The book begins with a review of basic statistics, including descriptive statistics, kinds of variables, and types of data sets. It then discusses regression analysis in general terms and in terms of financial investment models, such as the capital asset pricing model and the Fama/French model. It also describes mean-variance portfolio analysis and concludes with a focus on time series analysis. Providing the connection between elementary statistics courses and quantitative finance courses, this text helps both existing and future quants improve their data analysis skills and better understand the modeling process.

The Routledge Handbook of Banking and Finance in Asia brings together leading scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to provide a comprehensive and cutting-edge guide to Asia's financial institutions, markets, and systems. Part I provides a country-by-country overview of banking and finance in East, Southeast, and South Asia, including examples from China, Japan, Hong Kong, India, and Singapore. Part II contains thematic chapters, covering topics such as commercial banking, development banking, infrastructure finance, stock markets, insurance, and sovereign wealth funds. It also includes examinations of banking regulation and supervision, and analyses of macroprudential regulation, capital flow management measures, and monetary policy. Finally, it provides new insights into topical issues such as SME, green, and Islamic finance. This handbook is an essential resource for scholars and students of Asian economics and finance and for professionals working in financial markets in Asia.

This book explores contemporary empirical issues in Islamic economics. It begins by outlining current trends in Islamic economics and before identifying gaps in the empirical research. It then goes on to discuss the role of institutions in economic growth for Islamic countries, and the fiscal aspects of Islamic economics. It explores issues in debt and growth, as well as the instruments of monetary management in Islamic economics. It analyses the trade-off between growth and stability and concludes with discussion of Zakat and Waqf in driving growth.

After decades covering war and disaster, bestselling author and acclaimed satirist P. J. O'Rourke takes on his scariest subjects yet: business, investment, finance and the political chicanery behind them. Want to get rich overnight for free in 3 easy steps with no risk? Then don't buy this book. (Actually, if you believe there's a book that can do that, you shouldn't buy any books because you probably can't read.) P.J.'s approach to business, investment and finance is different. He takes the risks for you in his chapter 'How I Learned Economics by Watching People Try to Kill Each Other.' He proposes 'A Way to Raise Taxes That We'll All Love' - a 200% tax on celebrities. He offers a brief history of economic transitions before exploring the world of high-tech innovation with a chapter on 'Unnovations,' which asks, 'The Internet - whose idea was it to put all the idiots on earth in touch with each other?' He pokes fun at bitcoin, and closes with a fanciful short story about the morning that he wakes up and finds that all the world's goods and services are free! This is P.J. at his finest, a book not to be missed.

This open access volume of the AIDA Europe Research Series on Insurance Law and Regulation brings together contributions from authors with different legal cultures. It aims to identify the legal issues that arise from the intersection of two disciplines: insurance law and corporate/company law. These legal issues are examined mainly from the perspective of European Union (EU) law. However, there are also contributions from other legal systems, enriching the perspective with which to approach these issues.

The book is devoted to relations between the ethnic diversity and the quality of governance at the local level. Opolskie province in Poland is a case for explaining this interdependence. That is because of its history of multiculturalism and the present state of its ethnic diversity. The important feature of this region is, that nearly half of the communes is ethnically homogenous when the rest is ethnically diversified with a strong position of German and Silesian minorities. The preliminary assumption was, that the quality of governance would be higher in communes characterized by ethnic diversity. On the basis of the nested analysis method, authors conducted quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The Future of the European Union Integration: A Failure or a Success? Future expectations are making an effort in investigating the present and future developments in the European Union integration regarding the challenges the EU had encountered since the 2000s to 2018. During the last two decades, the EU integration had faced several crises endangering its reason of existence, including the Constitutional Crisis, 2008 Financial and Economic Crisis, Migration Crises, and Brexit. In this respect, two different arguments predict the future of the EU integration, while some groups think that the EU will lose its existence reason, others claim that the EU will be integrated more than before eliminating crises and rebuilding new capacities.

For the past 30 years international monetary economists have believed that exchange rate models cannot outperform the random walk in out-of-sample forecasting as a result of the 1983 paper written by Richard Meese and Kenneth Rogoff. Marking the culmination of their extensive research into the Meese-Rogoff puzzle, Moosa and Burns challenge the orthodoxy by demonstrating that the naive random walk model can be outperformed by exchange rate models when forecasting accuracy is measured by metrics that do not rely exclusively on the magnitude of forecasting error. The authors present compelling evidence, supported by their own measure: the 'adjusted root mean square error', to finally solve the Meese-Rogoff puzzle and provide a new alternative. Demystifying the Meese-Rogoff Puzzle will appeal to academics with an interest in exchange rate economics and international monetary economics. It will also be a useful resource for central banks and financial institutions.

This volume investigates the impact of energy technology innovations on economic development and presents new areas of research into the financial economics of energy as well as new studies into valuation, electricity pricing and the economic, regulatory and environmental costs of alternative energy sources. Academics and practitioners take a global perspective and present cases from several countries. The book concentrates on three issues: 1) innovation and shocks in energy markets; 2) environment and renewables and 3) fossil fuel regulation. The book will provide a useful resource for anyone with an academic or business interest in energy and value issues. This is the fourth volume in a series on energy organized by the Center for Energy and Value Issues (CEVI). The previous volumes in the series include Financial Aspects in Energy (2011), Energy Economics and Financial Markets (2012) and Perspectives on Energy Risk (2014).

Adam Smith revolutionized economic theory with his 1776 work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. He proposed rules governing labor, supply, and demand; and describes division of labor, stockpiling of wealth, lending, and interest. Smith also discusses how economies lead to opulence. Wealth of Nations also offers a defense for free-market capitalism. Any student of economics should be familiar with the concepts and laws that Smith developed, as much of economic theory is still based upon his work. This Cosimo Classic is an unabridged reprint of the 4th edition, published in London in 1786, and contains both Volume I and Volume II together in the same edition. Scottish economist and philosopher ADAM SMITH (1723-1790) helped set standards in the fields of political economics and moral philosophy, playing a key role in the early development of the scholarship of economics. His other writings include Essays on Philosophical Subjects.

Recent large-scale corporate collapses, such as Lehman Brothers, Enron, Worldcom, and Parmalat, highlight the implosion of traditional models of fraud prevention. By focusing on risk factors at the micro level, they have failed to take into account the broader context in which external auditors operate as well as the crucial importance of such factors as corruption, organizational culture, corporate social responsibility, ethical values, governance, ineffective regulation, and a lack of transparency. Corporate Fraud and Corruption engages readers by showing how evidence-based, multi-level micro and macro analysis of fraud risk and protective factors inform effective fraud prevention, in turn minimizing financial catastrophes. Krambia-Kapardis focuses on her own empirical research into the aetiology of fraud to showcase a holistic approach to fraud prevention. This book also features major case studies from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

This book, by one of China's leading economists, explores the past and present of the RMB-the people's currency-as it is poised to compete with the dollar as the international reserve currency. Exchange rate movement and its pass-through to changes in domestic prices have been topics of wide concern among economists. However, relatively few studies have empirically investigated the relationship between exchange rate movements and China's international trade.This book fills this gap, using the general equilibrium theory of the western economic science norm systems, integrating the leading heterogeneous firm theory of international trade, attempting to set up a theoretical structural model for further prediction, and applying the data from sample cases to examine the structural model. This book will be of interest to economists, financiers, and China watchers.

This book exposes, for the first time in modern scholarship, the role that the rise of the Carry Trade played in British financial crises between 1825 and 1866, how in reaction the Bank of England improved its management of monetary policy after 1866 and how those lessons have been forgotten since the 1970s. Britain is one of the few major capitalist economies in the world to have avoided policy-induced systemic financial crises for more than 100 years of its history-between 1866 and 1973. Beforehand, it suffered a series of serious banking panics, in 1825, 1837, 1847, 1857-58 and 1866. Since the 1970s banking instability has returned again, with the global financial crisis of 2007-09 hitting Britain hard. Economists and policymakers have asked what can be learnt from Britain's experience of the disappearance and reappearance of crises to help efforts to prevent future ones. This book answers that question with a major reassessment of Britain's financial history over the past two centuries. It does so by applying the long-neglected ideas of the British Banking School to explain how crises can occur because of the Carry Trade. This book is essential reading for economists and historians of modern Britain, practitioners and policymakers, as well as anyone who is affected by financial crises and their consequences.

This book provides an assessment of the role of the International Monetary Fund in poor countries. In recent years, a large portion of the work of the IMF has focused on the economies of low-income countries by aiming to create conditions conducive to poverty reduction and stable economic growth. More than two fifths of the IMF's 185 members are low-income countries and many others have substantial pockets of poverty in their populations. Since economic development and the reduction of poverty are the most important economic challenges that these countries face, how can the IMF best help them? How can the imperative of macroeconomic and financial stability be reconciled with the requirements for sustained economic growth? This volume brings together the research of leading economists, political scientists, and historians to suggest ways for the IMF to address these issues effectively

The book's 30 chapters are divided into three sections - "international trade, economic development, macroeconomics and finance" - and focus on the frontier issues in each.

Section I addresses analytical issues relating to trade-environment linkage, capital accumulation for pollution abatement, possibility of technology diffusion by multinational corporations, nature of innovation inducing tariff protection, effects of import restriction and child labour, the links between exchange rate, direction of trade and financial crisis-the implications for India and global economic crisis, financial institutions and global capital flows and balance of payments imbalances.

Section II consists of discussions on the causes of widespread poverty persisting in South Asia, development dividend associated with peace in South Asia, issues of well-being and human development, implications for endogenous growth through human capital accumulation on environmental quality and taxation, the rationale for a labour supply schedule for the poor, switching as an investment strategy, the role of government and strategic interaction in the presence of information asymmetry, government's role in controlling food inflation, inter-state variations in levels and growth of industry in India, structural breaks in India's service sector development, and the phenomenon of wasted votes in India's parliamentary elections.

Section III deals with the effectiveness of monetary policy in tackling economic crisis, the effective demand model of corporate leverages and recession, the empirical link between stock market development and economic growth in cross-country experience in Asia, an empirical verification of the Mckinnon-Shaw hypothesis for financial development in India, the dynamics of the behaviour of the Indian stock market, efficiency of non-life insurance companies, econometric study of the causal linkage between FDI and current account balance in India and the implications of contagious crises for the Indian economy.

Eighteen papers address a number of financial research topics pertinent to the Pacific Basin region in the 5th volume in the series.

This book analyses three key aspects of microfinancing, namely social purpose, commercialization and innovations and examines, through a global perspective, how these aspects helped and diverted microfinance institutions towards the attainment of their dual goals over the last twenty years. Since microfinance remains informal in nature for most economies, not all financial innovations are suitable for its needs. Hence, the arguments in the book put forth an important challenge to the advocates of innovations and subsequently highlight why MFIs should be cautious when integrating innovations to ensure its original promise. The book is based on empirical analysis by utilising the latest and global microfinance market data, rather than focusing on a specific region. Thus, the book bridges a gap in knowledge by unravelling detail of the social purpose, commercialization and innovations within the field of microfinance and will be a valuable resource for those exploring the dynamics of innovations in microfinance.

This book explores the impact of finance on urban spaces as well as cities' role in the social constitution and dissemination of financial logistics and techniques. It brings together literature from different disciplinary areas to increase our understanding of financialization. It observes how non-financial members of society, such as public bureaucrats, urban planners, the media and so on, are actively involved in the financialization of urban areas. With an explicit focus on Brazil, a developing country in the Global South, the book demonstrates how the country has been grappling with complex and contradictory processes of neoliberalization, decentralization, re-democratization and institutional-legal strengthening of frameworks for urban and regional planning, stressing the relations between urban space and finance capital. With a distinct view of filling a gap in the current literature on urban financialization, the book aims to focus on less developed areas in this field and link them with the literature on social studies of finance. This makes the text relevant for academics and scholars of urban studies and planning theory, geography, development studies and political economy, as well as scholars in the US and Europe interested in understanding Brazilian patterns of financialization.

This book provides an introduction to the vision of an economic system based completely on the Holy Qur'an-a system defined as a collection of institutions, representing rules of behavior, prescribed by Allah for humans, and the traditions of the Messenger. The authors argue that the main reason for the economic underperformance of Muslim countries and their economies has been non-compliance with the prescribed rules of behavior. Rule non-compliance has been chiefly due to the failure of Muslims to comprehend the Metaframework of the Qur'an and the Archetype Model of the Prophet Mohammad and interpret them in ways compatible with their own generation and time. Askari and Mirakhor believe these rules (institutions), properly adapted to prevailing conditions present what they consider as an ideal economic system.

This book emphasizes the applications of statistics and probability to finance. The basics of these subjects are reviewed and more advanced topics in statistics, such as regression, ARMA and GARCH models, the bootstrap, and nonparametric regression using splines, are introduced as needed. The book covers the classical methods of finance and it introduces the newer area of behavioral finance. Applications and use of MATLAB and SAS software are stressed. The book will serve as a text in courses aimed at advanced undergraduates and masters students. Those in the finance industry can use it for self-study.

Over the last decade, dynamical systems theory and related nonlinear methods have had a major impact on the analysis of time series data from complex systems. Recent developments in mathematical methods of state-space reconstruction, time-delay embedding, and surrogate data analysis, coupled with readily accessible and powerful computational facilities used in gathering and processing massive quantities of high-frequency data, have provided theorists and practitioners unparalleled opportunities for exploratory data analysis, modelling, forecasting, and control.
Until now, research exploring the application of nonlinear dynamics and associated algorithms to the study of economies and markets as complex systems is sparse and fragmentary at best. Modelling and Forecasting Financial Data brings together a coherent and accessible set of chapters on recent research results on this topic. To make such methods readily useful in practice, the contributors to this volume have agreed to make available to readers upon request all computer programs used to implement the methods discussed in their respective chapters.
Modelling and Forecasting Financial Data is a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students studying complex systems in finance, biology, and physics, as well as those applying such methods to nonlinear time series analysis and signal processing.

An understanding of the behaviour of financial assets and the evolution of economies has never been as important as today. This book looks at these complex systems from the perspective of the physicist. So called 'econophysics' and its application to finance has made great strides in recent years. Less emphasis has been placed on the broader subject of macroeconomics and many economics students are still taught traditional neo-classical economics. The reader is given a general primer in statistical physics, probability theory, and use of correlation functions. Much of the mathematics that is developed is frequently no longer included in undergraduate physics courses. The statistical physics of Boltzmann and Gibbs is one of the oldest disciplines within physics and it can be argued that it was first applied to ensembles of molecules as opposed to being applied to social agents only by way of historical accident. The authors argue by analogy that the theory can be applied directly to economic systems comprising assemblies of interacting agents. The necessary tools and mathematics are developed in a clear and concise manner. The body of work, now termed econophysics, is then developed. The authors show where traditional methods break down and show how the probability distributions and correlation functions can be properly understood using high frequency data. Recent work by the physics community on risk and market crashes are discussed together with new work on betting markets as well as studies of speculative peaks that occur in housing markets. The second half of the book continues the empirical approach showing how by analogy with thermodynamics, a self-consistent attack can be made on macroeconomics. This leads naturally to economic production functions being equated to entropy functions - a new concept for economists. Issues relating to non-equilibrium naturally arise during the development and application of this approach to economics. These are discussed in the context of superstatistics and adiabatic processes. As a result it does seem ultimately possible to reconcile the approach with non-equilibrium systems, and the ideas are applied to study income and wealth distributions, which with their power law distribution functions have puzzled many researchers ever since Pareto discovered them over 100 years ago. This book takes a pedagogical approach to these topics and is aimed at final year undergraduate and beginning gradaute or post-graduate students in physics, economics, and business. However, the experienced researcher and quant should also find much of interest.