The Handbook of International Financial Terms aims to be the most comprehensive and up-to-date reference book available to those who are involved - or could be involved - in the world of finance. The financial world has a capacity for ingenious innovation and this extends to the often bewildering array and use of terms. Here you can find out what a Circus, a Firewall, an Amazon Bond, a Clean Float, a Cocktail Swap, a Butterfly, a Streaker, a Straddle, and a Strangle are. As well as defining terms, the book also shows how they are used differently in different markets and countries. It also has numerous examples showing clearly the use of particular calculations and instruments; and provides details of major markets, acronyms, and currencies. Reflecting the development of global financial markets this handbook will have broad appeal around the world. It will be a reliable guide for practitioners, and those in the related professions of accounting, law, and management. At the same time it will be an invaluable companion for advanced students of finance, accounting, and business.

Throughout their long history, the primary concern of central banks has oscillated between price stability in normal times and financial stability in extraordinary times. In the wake of the recent global financial crisis, central banks have been given additional responsibilities to ensure financial stability, which has sparked intense debate over the nature of their role. Bankers and policy makers face an enormous challenge finding the right balance of power between the central bank and the state. This volume is the result of an international conference held at Norges Bank (the central bank of Norway). International experts and policy makers present research and historical analysis on the evolution of the central bank. They specifically focus on four key aspects: its role as an institution, the part it plays within the international monetary system, how to delineate and limit its functions, and how to apply the lessons of the past two centuries.

This study addresses two interrelated issues in international taxation. The first objective is to assess the nature and extent of the international mobility of foreign direct investment. This empirical work is based on the operations of US multinational corporations abroad (production, employment and capital stock), not simply on financial flows of foreign affilitates. It considers whether distinctions between horizontal versus vertical integration can be applied to opertions in developed versus developing countries, and whether either form of integration is very sensitive to tax and cost conditions, not only in the host country but in the US. Growing sensitivity of foreign direct investment to taxes is one reason for governments to be concerned about tax competition among jurisdictions to attract economic activity. Tax competition, however, also arises from an attempt to shift the real activity. The second objective is to assess how tax competition is affecting the structure of national tax systems and whether efforts at international coordination of tax policy are likely to affect the progression of such changes in the future.

There are few textbooks or reference works on international trade finance pertaining to Hong Kong. This text covers all the basic concepts of international trade and takes into account actual practices of trade financing in Hong Kong. The book consists of two sections the Principles Section and the Practical Guide Section. Risks associated with most trade-finance products are discussed. This second edition represents a substantial revision to the first edition first published in 1999. Readers will find this book an update of the adoption of UCP 600 and new practices of the services by ECIC and major trade promotion institutions in Hong Kong. Major differences between Incoterms 2000 and 2010 will also be discussed. The book provides ample and systematic material for the training of practicing bankers, import and export managers, and lawyers. Students of the subject Finance of International Trade of the Associateship Examination of the Hong Kong Institute of Bankers would find this book very useful for preparing the Examination.

International debt rescheduling, both in earlier epochs and our present one, has been marked by a flurry of bargaining. In this process, significant variation has emerged over time and across cases in the extent to which debtors have undertaken economic adjustment, banks or bondholders have written down debts, and creditor governments and international organizations have intervened in negotiations. Debt Games develops and applies a situational theory of bargaining to analyze the adjustment undertaken by debtors and the concessions provided by lenders in international debt rescheduling. This approach has two components: a focus on each actor's individual situation, defined by its political and economic bargaining resources, and a complementary focus on changes in their position. The model proves successful in accounting for bargaining outcomes in eighty-four percent of the sixty-one cases, which include all instances of Peruvian and Mexican debt rescheduling over the last one hundred and seventy years as well as Argentine and Brazilian rescheduling between 1982 and 1994.

This book explains the significant variation that has emerged over time and across cases in international debt rescheduling during the past one hundred and seventy years. Based on a novel situational theory of bargaining, Professor Aggarwal's study provides a method to deduce actors' payoffs in different bargaining situations to develop "debt games," which are then used to predict negotiating outcomes. This integrated political-economic approach to analyze bargaining episodes goes beyond simple economic models or purely descriptive studies. In doing so, it contributes to international political and economic theory, game theory, and historical research on debt negotiations.

The deregulation of financial markets in various nations in the 1980s brought about a qualitative change in their operation and a greater degree of integration among these markets. These changes enabled the free flow of financial resources across borders, which allows private and public institutions in each economy the ability to draw on the strengths of foreign markets to meet their individual needs. But many observers in Japan, Europe, North America and elsewhere fear that the new freedom has contributed to a greater instability in individual markets and the transmission of fluctuations to other markets. The introduction and individual chapters in this 1994 book examine the ramifications of these trends.

Since the financial crisis in the late 1990s, Asian governments have been considering strengthening regional monetary and financial cooperation. Proposals have ranged from the Asian Monetary Fund to common currencies. During the past two years, China, Japan, Korea, and the member-states of ASEAN have established a set of financial facilities under an agreement made in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) mobilizes a portion of the very large reserve holdings of its members for financial stabilization in a crisis. Organized under the "ASEAN plus three" grouping, these arrangements do not include the United States or other countries outside the region. The CMI thus raises several important questions: Under what terms will financing be extended on a regional basis? Is it likely to stabilize or destabilize international capital flows? What will CMI's relationship be to the International Monetary Fund and other official financial institutions? How should governments build on these arrangements in the future? Could they provide the basis for broader integration of the East Asian region?This study examines the case for and against regional financial arrangements in East Asia, describes the CMI, compares it to financial arrangements in other regions, and recommends how the Initiative can preserve its complementarity to multilateral institutions and be strengthened in the future. The study specifically addresses the concerns of Americans, Europeans, and multilateral organizations, assessing the pros and cons of such regional financial arrangements for the global system.

This path-breaking comparative study of the economies of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan analyzes the evolution of the financial systems of each country in relation to their last four decades of dynamic economic growth. Each country study is addressed in two chapters, the first covering macroeconomic aspects of the financial system and the second chapter focusing on commercial banking. The analysis shows how financial development has occurred in two distinct phases. Initially interest rates were regulated to remain below market levels, entry of new financial institutions was restricted, financial markets were segmented, and domestic finance was insulated from world financial markets. The second phase has seen a steady, if sometimes slow, removal of these restrictions. This liberalization has meant regulation now focuses on prudential measures for system safety while financial resources are increasingly allocated through the marketplace. The evaluation of the financial development of Japan, Korea and Taiwan provides significant insights for economists and policymakers. In particular, there are many lessons for less developed markets and transforming socialist economics.

The problems of exchange rate misalignments and the resulting payments imbalances have plagued the world economy for decades. At the Louvre Accord of 1987, the Group of Five industrial countries adopted a system of reference ranges for exchange rate management, influenced by proposals of C. Fred Bergstan and John Williamson for a target zone system. The reference range approach has, however, been operated only intermittently and half-heartedly, and questions continue to be raised in policy and scholarly circles about the design and operation of a full-fledged target zone regime. This volume, with chapters by leading international economists, explores one crucial issue in the design of a target zone system: the problem of calculating Williamson's concept of the fundamental equilibrium exchange rate (FEER). Williamson contributes an overview of the policy and analytic issues and a second chapter on his own calculations.

This book brings together a collection of papers by leading academics, bankers, and consultants, in a masterful survey of leading issues in corporate governance. The papers concentrate upon the financing of corporations, and the role of the banks and stock markets in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan. A central theme of the book is a constant awareness of the links between the accountability of senior managers, the system of corporate governance, and the performance of a company. This book examines the role of shareholders, company boards, and managers under a market-based system as in the UK and USA, in comparison with the 'insider' system found in Japan and, to a lesser extent, Germany. The contributors discuss the view that this UK system leads to a preoccupation with short-term corporate performance and a greater likelihood of hostile takeovers. The contribution of the banks to corporate finance and control is examined in several papers, including a discussion of the special problems of small firms. Part II of the book begins with a chapter comparing and contrasting the British experience with other systems, and then authoritatively analyses the Japanese and the German financial and corporate systems. Capital Markets and Corporate Governance provides an essential insight into issues of corporate financing, accountability of managers, and efficiency. The contributors deal with this complex and topical subject in a comprehensive and lucid manner.

International Financial Market Investment A Swiss Banker's Guide Erwin W. Heri and Vanessa Rossi During recent years, the number of individual investors in financial markets who are interested in the whole range of securities available (shares, bonds, warrants and other instruments) has increased dramatically. Most significantly, investors are showing increasing sophistication in investment risk analysis and are demanding more advanced trading techniques for their portfolios. Books designed to familiarise this growing audience with the techniques of investment analysis are rare. This book aims to bridge the gap between specialist literature written for the experienced practitioner and the theoretical, non-practical, academic textbooks. It will, therefore, appeal to private investors, fund managers, corporate finance directors and MBA-level students looking for an introduction to the analysis of financial markets and the use of techniques in portfolio management.

In 1933 and 1956, the United States sharply limited the kinds of securities, commercial, and insurance activities banks could engage in. These regulations remain in place despite profound changes in the economic environment, in the structure of the national and international financial markets, and in technology. This book evaluates the case for and against eliminating these barriers. The authors study the consequences of bank regulation in the US as it relates to competition in international financial markets. They examine universal banking systems in other countries, especially Germany, Switzerland, and the UK, and how they work. They then apply the lessons to US banking, paying particular attention to the benchmarks of stability, equity, efficiency, and competitiveness against which the performance of national financial systems should be measured. They propose a level playing field on which any number of forms of organization can grow in the financial services sector, in which universal banking is one of the permitted structures, and where regulation is linked to function.

How do countries' political and policy choices affect the credit ratings they receive? Sovereign ratings influence countries' cost of funding, and observers have long worried that rating agencies - these unelected, unappointed, unaccountable, for-profit organizations - can interfere with democratic sovereignty if they assign lower ratings to certain political and policy choices. The questions of whether, how, and why ratings react to policy and politics, however, remain unexplored. Rating Politics opens the black box of sovereign ratings to uncover the logic that drives rating responses to political and policy factors. Relying on statistical analysis of rating scores, interviews with sovereign rating analysts, and a close reading of the official communications of rating agencies about their decisions, Zsófia Barta and Alison Johnston show that ratings penalize center-left governments and many (though not all) policies associated with the center-left agenda. The motivation for such penalties is not rooted in assumptions about how those political and policy features affect growth and debt servicing capacity. Instead, ratings are lower in the presence of those features because they are expected to make a country more vulnerable to market panics whenever the economy is hit by unforeseen shocks, as they signal insufficient willingness and/or ability to engage in determined austerity for the sake of reassuring markets. Since market panics and the resulting "sudden stops" of funding lead to humiliating collapses of ratings, rating agencies attempt to insure themselves against "rating failures" by pre-emptively assigning lower ratings to countries with the "wrong" political and policy mix.

Depending on one's point of view, multinational enterprises are either the heroes or the villains of the globalized economy. Governments compete fiercely for foreign direct investment by such companies, but complain when firms go global and move their activities elsewhere. Multinationals are seen by some as threats to national identities and wealth and are accused of riding roughshod over national laws and of exploiting cheap labor. However, the debate on these companies and foreign direct investment is rarely grounded on sound economic arguments.

This book brings clarity to the debate. With the contribution of other leading experts, Giorgio Barba Navaretti and Anthony Venables assess the determinants of multinationals' actions, investigating why their activity has expanded so rapidly, and why some countries have seen more such activity than others. They analyze their effects on countries that are recipients of inward investments, and on those countries that see multinational firms moving jobs abroad. The arguments are made using modern advances in economic analysis, a case study, and by drawing on the extensive empirical literature that assesses the determinants and consequences of activity by multinationals. The treatment is rigorous, yet accessible to all readers with a background in economics, whether students or professionals. Drawing out policy implications, the authors conclude that multinational enterprises are generally a force for the promotion of prosperity in the world economy.

Wall Street has a history far richer than the Hunts' attempt to corner the silver market and the development of the "junk bond." Walter Werner and Steven Smith explore the relationship between the securities markets and the historic development of the American economy in "Wall Street," emphasizing the importance of the period 1790 through 1840. The book focuses on the corporate response to the capital needs of the developing economy, and the role of the securities markets in mobilizing and allocating that capital.

Werner and Smith argue that a long view of our corporate history demonstrates that the line of development from the corporate system of 1790 is direct and continuous. The authors contend there was no corporate revolution; rather, each successive era set the stage for the next, and all have built on the foundations laid during the period from 1790-1840, which they call the Bank Age. The authors view the history of the corporate system as a process of continuous maturation where securities markets and public corporations have always been of vital importance to each other.

"Wall Street" is written in non-technical language for the general reader and provides insight into the early years of the bull, the bear, and the buck.

This is a history of international monetary thought from the end of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century. It provides a comprehensive survey of the literature produced on international macroeconomics for that period. It will be of interest to teachers of and graduate students in international monetary economics, monetary theory, and the history of economic thought. Professor Flanders argues that progress in the field of international monetary economics (or in the discipline as a whole) has not been linear. Instead of writing a sequential, chronological story, she has classified the literature according to groupings of ideas and classes of models. After a brief survey of the Classical doctrines, the book covers the developments of major approaches, which are labelled Neoclassical, Late Classical, and Keynesian. The models are conceptualized in two streams: stream F encompasses formal, long-run equilibrium models, all of which emerge from a common proto-model involving the endogeneity of the money supply under fixed exchange rates. Stream P deals with policy-oriented short-run equilibrium and disequilibrium approaches. There is emphasis throughout on the varying roles assigned by the several approaches to international trade in financial assets, that is, to international capital flows.

This is the United Nations definitive report on the state of the world economy, providing global and regional economic outlook for 2020 and 2021. Produced by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the five United Nations regional commissions, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, with contributions from the UN World Tourism Organization and other intergovernmental agencies

This study argues that the market fundamentalist approach to economics, promoted by most of the industrialised countries and the Bretton Woods institutions, actually increases the vulnerabilities of small and poor countries, exposing them to financial crises. It argues that claims that global growth and equity would best be served through deeper financial integration are founded on weak theoretical and empirical premises. It shows how economic liberalisation in poor countries with weak and underdeveloped markets and institutions, with no welfare support systems, brings few benefits, and simply exacerbates poverty. The co- authors fear the impacts may be permanent, as current trends indicate deep poverty will be confined within defined geographical boundaries, leading to a ever-widening gap between rich and poor.

The explosion of the Covid-19 pandemic in February 2020 led to a paradigm change in the European Union architecture of economic governance. To mitigate the pandemic's damage, the EU established a Recovery Fund called 'Next Generation EU' (NGEU). Funded though resources raised on the financial markets, this special budget is worth 750bnEURO at 2018 prices, which corresponds to 806,9bnEURO at current prices. Disbursed to member states in the form of both loans and grants and to be repaid on a long-term basis through the introduction of new EU taxes, the NGEU has endowed the EU with borrowing, spending, and taxing powers. EU Fiscal Capacity: Legal Integration After Covid-19 and the War in Ukraine argues that the NGEU constiutes a profound overhaul in the EU architecture of economic governance. Moving away from the fiscal surveillance shown in response to the euro-crisis, the EU has adopted a strategy of fiscal federalism more akin to the United States. The return of war in Europe following 75 years of peace has caused yet more socio-economic damage for the EU. Occuring as Europe was slowly re-emerging from the pandemic, the war in Ukraine has disrupted supply chains, increased humanitarian assistance costs, and generated an energy crisis. Within the context of war, the limitations of the current EU constitutional arrangements have yet again been exposed. EU Fiscal Capacity argues that the EU needs to retain the NGEU as a permanent feature of EMU. The first book to analyse how the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have affected Europe's Economic & Monetary Union from an EU law and policy perspective, this book is a must read for policy makers and students of European law and politics alike.

The explosion of the Covid-19 pandemic in February 2020 led to a paradigm change in the European Union architecture of economic governance. To mitigate the pandemic's damage, the EU established a Recovery Fund called 'Next Generation EU' (NGEU). Funded though resources raised on the financial markets, this special budget is worth 750bnEURO at 2018 prices, which corresponds to 806,9bnEURO at current prices. Disbursed to member states in the form of both loans and grants and to be repaid on a long-term basis through the introduction of new EU taxes, the NGEU has endowed the EU with borrowing, spending, and taxing powers. EU Fiscal Capacity: Legal Integration After Covid-19 and the War in Ukraine argues that the NGEU constiutes a profound overhaul in the EU architecture of economic governance. Moving away from the fiscal surveillance shown in response to the euro-crisis, the EU has adopted a strategy of fiscal federalism more akin to the United States. The return of war in Europe following 75 years of peace has caused yet more socio-economic damage for the EU. Occuring as Europe was slowly re-emerging from the pandemic, the war in Ukraine has disrupted supply chains, increased humanitarian assistance costs, and generated an energy crisis. Within the context of war, the limitations of the current EU constitutional arrangements have yet again been exposed. EU Fiscal Capacity argues that the EU needs to retain the NGEU as a permanent feature of EMU. The first book to analyse how the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have affected Europe's Economic & Monetary Union from an EU law and policy perspective, this book is a must read for policy makers and students of European law and politics alike.

The International Comparison Program (ICP) is a worldwide statistical initiative led by the World Bank under the auspices of the United Nations Statistical Commission. It produces comparable price and volume measures of gross domestic product (GDP) and its expenditure aggregates across economies. Through a partnership with international, regional, sub-regional and national agencies, the ICP collects price data and GDP expenditures to estimate purchasing power parities (PPPs) for the world's economies. The report provides ICP results for the benchmark year 2017 and revised results for earlier years. ICP data are used for socio-economic analyses by researchers, academics, policy makers at the national and international levels, and by organizations such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations, and the World Bank. Notably, PPPs and ICP data are used in indicators monitoring progress towards eight goals of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the World Bank's international poverty lines, and the construction of the Human Development Index by the United Nations, among others. The use of PPPs continues to grow and the ICP website (icp.worldbank.org) lists many applications of the data by the development community, academia, media and others.

This book questions the notion that South Africa can exert effective political leverage over its economically dependent neighbors while itself remaining free of regional influences.

Originally published in 1987.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.