In this groundbreaking book, renowned global economist David McWilliams unlocks the mysteries and the awesome power of money: what it is, how it works and why it matters.

Money is an epic, breathlessly entertaining journey across the world through the present and the past, from the birthplace of money in ancient Babylon to the beginning of trade along the silk road to China, from Marrakech markets to Wall Street and the dawn of cryptocurrency. By tracking its history McWilliams uncovers our relationship with money, transforming our perspective on its impact on the world right now.

The story of money is the story of our desires, our genius and our downfalls. Money has shaped the very essence of what it means to be human. We can’t hope to understand ourselves without it. And yet despite money’s primacy, most of us don’t truly understand it. Where does money come from? How much is out there? Who controls it? Nothing we’ve invented as a species has defined our own evolution so thoroughly and changed the direction of our planet’s history so dramatically. Money is power – and power beguiles. It unleashes our deepest cravings.

The story of money is the story of earth’s most inventive, destructive and dangerous animal, Homo Sapiens. It is our story.

This official ICSA study text has been specially designed to support students taking the Trust and Company Administration module of ICSA's Level 5 qualifications in International Finance and Administration.The text covers the syllabus for each module and is structured to help in planning a programme of study. Learning outcomes linked to the syllabus are highlighted to help students focus on the examination requirements for each module.The text follows a standard format and includes a range of features to encourage active learning and to help students apply principles and theory to real-life business situations, including: case law and case examples stop and think scenarios worked examples test yourself review questions and answers glossaries of key termsThe text provides an excellent guide for students, but also serves as a useful reference for anyone who needs an accessible and practical introduction to the subject.

This is a study of the law governing the bank-customer relationship pertaining to the disposition of funds by cheques and credit transfers, covering both paper-based and electronic payments. The work addresses, with various degrees of detail, common law, civilian, and `mixed' jurisdictions, particularly, Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Africa, Switzerland and the United States. In addition to the description of the law in these jurisdictions, the book contains an in-depth analysis of the common issues and the responses to them, in light of desired policies. Accordingly, an evaluation of the various rules and proposals for reform are integral parts of the study.

This book collects results from ad hoc surveys on firms pricing behavior conducted in 2003 and 2004 by nine National central banks of the Euro area in the context of a joint research project (Eurosystem Inflation Persistence Network). These surveys have proved to be an efficient way to test theories on the pricing strategies of economic agents, documenting, in qualitative terms, the underlying rationale of the observed pricing patterns. The book provides an unprecedented amount of information from more than 11,000 euro area firms, addressing issues such as the relevance of nominal and real rigidities, the information set used by firms in the price setting process, the strategy followed to review prices, the frequency of both price reviews and price changes, the reasons underlying price stickiness, and asymmetries in price adjustment. It also compares results for the euro area to those obtained for other countries by similar studies. Finally, it draws the main implications for theoretical modeling and for monetary policy.

The corporate world is typically structured in silos. Managers urgently need to overcome this "silo" effect by fusing ideas across different functional areas in the firm. In Fusion for Profit, Sharan Jagpal, a well-known and highly respected multidisciplinary researcher and business consultant, explains in simple language using real-world examples how managers can use sophisticated concepts to fuse different functional areas in the firm, especially marketing and finance, to increase the firm's value. The author provides novel solutions to a wide range of complex business problems ranging from choosing pricing and bundling strategies, to positioning and messaging strategies, to measuring brand equity, to measuring advertising productivity in a mixed media plan including Internet advertising, to compensating a multiproduct sales force, to measuring the potential gains and risks from mergers and acquisitions. These concepts are illustrated using case studies from a variety of firms in different industries, including AT&T, Coca-Cola, Continental Airlines, General Electric, Home Depot, Southwest Airlines, and Verizon.

The modern world is built on commodities - from the oil that fuels our cars to the metals that power our smartphones. We rarely stop to consider where they have come from. But we should.

The World for Sale lifts the lid on one of the least scrutinized corners of the world economy: the billionaire commodity traders who buy, hoard, and sell the earth's resources. It is the story of how a handful of swashbuckling businessmen became indispensable cogs in global markets, enabling an enormous expansion in international trade and connecting resource-rich countries - no matter how corrupt or war-torn - with the world's financial centers.

The result is an eye-opening tour through the wildest frontiers of the global economy, as well as a revelatory guide to how capitalism really works.

Global Imbalances, Financial Crises, and Central Bank Policies assesses the relationships between global imbalances, financial crises, and central bank policies, with a specific focus on their reserves. The book contains a strictly international perspective with an analysis based on empirical research that enables the reader to develop an analytical model that emphasizes interactions among individual central banks. With this innovative approach, the book develops a new method for defining an optimal demand for reserves. In addition, the book describes implications for financial reforms that might ultimately be more important than its empirical findings.

Handbook of Frontier Markets: Evidence from Asia and International Comparative Studies provides novel insights from academic perspectives about the behavior of investors and prices in several frontier markets. It explores finance issues usually reserved for developed and emerging markets in order to gauge whether these issues are relevant and how they manifest themselves in frontier markets. Frontier markets have now become a popular investment class among institutional investors internationally, with major financial services providers establishing index-benchmarks for this market-category. The anticipation for frontier markets is optimistic uncertainty, and many people believe that, given their growth rates, these markets will be economic success stories. Irrespective of their degrees of success, The Handbook of Frontier Markets can help ensure that the increasing international investment diverted to them will aid in their greater integration within the global financial system.

Small jurisdictions have become significant players in cross-border corporate and financial services. Their nature, legal status, and market roles, however, remain under-theorized. Lacking a sufficiently nuanced framework to describe their functions in cross-border finance - and the peculiar strengths of those achieving global dominance in the marketplace - it remains impossible to evaluate their impacts in a comprehensive manner. This book advances a new conceptual framework to refine the analysis and direct it toward more productive inquiries. Bruner canvasses extant theoretical frameworks used to describe and evaluate the roles of small jurisdictions in cross-border finance. He then proposes a new concept that better captures the characteristics, competitive strategies, and market roles of those achieving global dominance in the marketplace - the "market-dominant small jurisdiction" (MDSJ). Bruner identifies the central features giving rise to such jurisdictions' competitive strengths - some reflect historical, cultural, and geographic circumstances, while others reflect development strategies pursued in light of those circumstances. Through this lens, he evaluates a range of small jurisdictions that have achieved global dominance in specialized areas of cross-border finance, including Bermuda, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Delaware. Bruner further tests the MDSJ concept's explanatory power through a broader comparative analysis, and he concludes that the MDSJs' significance will likely continue to grow - as will the need for a more effective means of theorizing their roles in cross-border finance and the global dynamics generated by their ascendance.

'Development Financing' tackles the complicated subject of how to aid and finance the development of LEDCs. The problem, according to the writers, has not been whether or not to negotiate, but rather where and what should be negotiated when it came to tackling third world debt. As the debate reaches a stand-off between the more economically developed and less economically developed countries, this book offers several sets of perspectives (in a selection of essays) on how to appropriately manage the thorny issues of development financing.

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are internationally-recognized financial reporting guidelines regulated by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to ensure that uniformity exists in the global financial system. In addition to regulating financial reporting, the adoption of IRFS has been shown to impact the flow of foreign capital and trade. Economics and Political Implications of International Financial Reporting Standards focuses on the consequences and determinants of the adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS), which has remained a top issue in International Accounting. This timely publication brings to the forefront issues related to the political and economic influences and impacts of IFRS in addition to providing a platform for further research in this area. Policy makers, academics, researchers, graduate-level students, and professionals across the fields of management, economics, finance, international relations, and political science will find this publication pertinent to furthering their understanding of financial reporting at the global level.

This book shows that research contributions from different fields-finance, economics, computer sciences, and physics-can provide useful insights into key issues in financial and cryptocurrency markets. Presenting the latest empirical and theoretical advances, it helps readers gain a better understanding of financial markets and cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to use a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending and to control its issue without the need for a central authority, and it has attracted wide public attention since its introduction. In recent years, the academic community has also started gaining interest in cyptocurrencies, and research in the field has grown rapidly. This book presents is a collection of the latest work on cryptocurrency markets and the properties of those markets. This book will appeal to graduate students and researchers from disciplines such as finance, economics, financial engineering, computer science, physics and applied mathematics working in the field of financial markets, including cryptocurrency markets.

The book sets forth the economic rationale for international financial regulation and what role, if any, international regulation can play in effectively managing systemic risk while providing accountability to all affected nations. The book suggests that a particular type of global governance structure is necessary to have more efficient regulation of the international financial systems.

EU policy in the area of corporate governance and capital markets is being reoriented. Harmonization is less frequently seen as a concept in company law; regulatory competition is on the rise; and experiments in soft law are being carried out. Several Member States have recently reformed their corporate laws, wither as a reaction to financial scandals or in an effort to enhance investment. Convergence has increased as a result, particularly towards Anglo-American standards. Yet differences still exist, profoundly rooted in national systems of corporate governance. By contrast, capital markets law would seem to be an exception, having undergone intense harmonization in the last few years through the Lamfalussy regulatory architecture. Nonetheless, a European system of securities regulation is not yet in place. Regulation is predominantly domestic, while private laws affecting capital markets are still divergent. This volume examines the ongoing debate from an interdisciplinary perspective. Part 1 explores the political determinants of corporate governance and evaluates likely convergence and the role of regulatory competition. Part 2 considers the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MIFID) and its central role in harmonizing EU securities trading. Part 3 analyzes the MiFID more deeply and explores other measures including the Prospectus and Transparency Directives. Part 4 offers future perspectives on the post-FSAP era.