This book, originally published in 1975, deals with the sources of economic growth, inflation and the prospects of bringing it under control, floating exchange rates and restrictions on international capital movements. Although aimed at the non-specialist, professional economists willa slo find the book stimulating.

This book is a collection of papers presented in the conference held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in September 2010, that examines the role of macroprudential regulation in the financial industry. Shocked by the experience of the last few years, many argue that the more traditional microprudential regulatory tools are inadequate to create a safe and stable financial system. The microprudential paradigm relies on the presumption that the financial system as a whole can be made safe by ensuring individual financial institutions are made safe. This ignores interconnections and externalities, whereby the actions of one financial institution or events in financial markets can lead to spillover effects that adversely affect general market conditions, other financial institutions, and ultimately the economy as a whole. Instead, it is argued, there is a need for both microprudential approaches to regulate individual institutions and macroprudential approaches to manage the overall financial system risks.Conference participants discussed macroprudential regulation and related issues, including: What are the theoretical motivations for macroprudential regulation? How would it interact with other regulatory and macroeconomic policies, especially monetary policy? What would be the specific macroprudential tools? Who should have control over the macroprudential tools? How should a macroprudential regulator be structured? Where should it be housed? How can macroprudential policies be structured across national borders? What role, if any, can market discipline play in supporting macroprudential objectives?Concentrating on public policy issues, the conference featured keynote addresses by influential past and present public policy figures including: Paul Volcker, Chairman of the US President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board and former Chairman of the Federal Reserve System; Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Chairman, Promontory Financial Group Europe and Former Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision; Jaime Caruana, General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements and Former Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision; and Charles Taylor, Director of the Pew Charitable Trust Financial Reform Project and Former Executive Director of the Group of Thirty.

This book sheds new light on the role played by European banks in the economic colonization of much of the globe. Based on previously unused archival material, it examines the origins and development of imperial banking systems. Contributors utilize new developments and methodology in business history to explore a broad range of countries including Cuba, Brazil, Portugal, South Africa and Algeria. The central topic of interest in this book is the institutional history of central, issuing and rediscounting banks. While much attention has been paid to the British, Dutch and French banks and financial instituions, this book is unique in its focus on colonial and overseas banking. Using a range of case studies, this book highlights both the immense variety and cohesion that defined colonial banking practices. This book will be of interest to researchers concerned with international finance and banking and economic history.

As the British relinquish control of Hong Kong, the economic relationship among the People's Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, and Hong Kong becomes especially significant. Despite political and diplomatic tensions, this relationship has grown phenomenally in recent years and continues to prosper. Known as the " China Circle, " it is an important emerging economic region that cuts across political boundaries. This book is the first comprehensive study of the underlying economic dynamics that make the China Circle not only possible, but hugely successful. Yun-wing Sung, Barry Naughton, and Kong Yam Tan analyze the macroeconomic issues in each of the political entities that make up the China Circle. Michael Borrus, Chin Chung, Jean Franois Huchet, and Dieter Ernst focus one of the region's leading industries, electronics. With rapid changes in technology, firm strategy, and global markets driving its continuous restructuring, the electronics industry offers a detailed view of the factors that are shaping the region as a whole. To provide a complete economic picture of the China Circle today--and possible future developments--the contributors explore key issues including emerging divisions of labor, developing trade and investment patterns, and the effect of Hong Kong's return to China in July 1997. Written in an open and accessible style, the book is especially timely and more in-depth than anything currently available.

In light of the experience of the global financial crisis, this book develops concrete recommendations for financial sector reform and regulation in Asian economies aimed at preventing the recurrence of systemic financial crises, improving the ability to manage and resolve crises, managing capital flows and promoting the development of Asian bond markets. The focus of the book is on longer-term structural measures. It explores areas such as the scope for regional monitoring and cooperation; deepening and integration of Asian bond and money markets; liberalization/regulation of capital flows; and issues related to macroprudential oversight, regulatory structure and cooperation as well as the role of state intervention in crisis resolution in the financial sector. The need for and impacts of regulations on innovative financial products and specific investor groups such as hedge funds, ways to reduce systemic risk of pro-cyclicality of regulation and ways to improve the infrastructure and regulatory environment for local currency bond markets are also examined in depth. The book will appeal to public and private finance experts, policy makers and decision makers in governments and banks, think-tanks and students in graduate courses related to financial and economic development. Contributors: C. Adams, J.A. Batten, Y.J. Cho, S.F. de Lis, M. Fujii, A. Garcia-Herrero, W.P. Hogan, M. Kapur, M. Kawai, D.G. Mayes, R. Mohan, P.J. Morgan, M.G. Plummer, M. Pomerleano, M.M. Spiegel, P.G. Szilagyi, L.D. Wall, A. Winkler

In an era defined by financial upheaval, few parts of the economy have witnessed the kind of volatility seen in commodities markets. In this book, Blake Clayton, a Wall Street analyst and adjunct fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, draws on the latest thinking from academia and the private sector to deliver a clear-eyed analysis of pressing questions at the intersection of commodity markets, natural resource economics, and public policy. The result is a work that challenges the conventional wisdom about how these markets function and provides a fresh perspective on what public policy can do to improve them.

This book analyzes the whole path to justice: from the decision to enter the path to justice until justice is achieved and applies a mixed-methods approach using quantitative and qualitative data. It deliberately takes the consumer's perspective and, beyond the scope of existing studies, does not only take into account the existence of mechanisms and forums to claim justice, but their appropriateness for vulnerable target groups. The book sheds more light on microfinance and other vulnerable clients who, due to existing barriers, cannot access grievance, redress or complaint mechanisms. Eliminating these access barriers would cater to the achievement of the 16th Sustainable Development Goal by increasing vulnerable consumers' Access to Justice. This book will be of interest to academics researching access to justice, researchers focusing on consumer protection issues in developing countries, and practitioners working in financial inclusion.

This ground-breaking book addresses the problem of price disparities across countries and, for the first time, uses market structures as the central focus. The author also addresses the effects of trade barriers, input-output relations and economies of scale, factors often ignored by other studies, to determine what causes prices to vary across countries.A post-Keynesian markup pricing model incorporating market power, intermediate inputs and productivity differences is developed and tested using regression analysis. New data on sectoral price levels in Japan and the Republic of Korea and data on GDP and investment price levels for a large number of countries are used. The empirical evidence shows that wages, labor productivity, market power and economies of scale are the most important variables for the explanation of differing price levels across countries. The author finds little evidence for the importance of policy-induced trade barriers and competition policy in explaining this. This book will be useful for scholars of post-Keynesian economics and international economics.

Does globalization mean a race to the bottom in social standards and the inevitable decay of the welfare state? Ramesh Mishra - a leading authority on social policy - examines the implications of globalization in respect of social policy and social standards in advanced industrial countries.Globalization is a form of international neo-liberalism supported by the United States, world markets and organizations such as the IMF and OECD, whose policies are becoming increasingly influential and are putting nation states under pressure to reduce social standards. In this book Ramesh Mishra considers the impact of globalization on full employment and the labour market, income distribution, taxation and social protection in developed capitalist countries. He argues that social standards have declined far more in English speaking countries than in continental Europe and Japan, and that globalization is as much a political and ideological phenomenon as it is economic. In conclusion, Professor Mishra argues the case for a transnational approach to social policy to ensure that social standards rise in line with economic growth. Globalization and the Welfare State is highly accessible and will be welcomed by students and scholars of social policy, social work, political science and sociology as well as by policymakers in international organizations and government.

Shadow banking - a system of credit creation outside traditional banks - lies at the very heart of the global economy. It accounts for over half of global banking assets, and represents a third of the global financial system. Although the term 'shadow banking' only entered public discourse in 2007, the importance and scope of this system is now widely recognised by the international policy-makers. There is, however, much less consensus on the origins of the shadow banking system, what role it plays in global political economy and the optimal approach to regulating this complex segment of finance. This volume addresses these questions. Shadow Banking is the first study to bring together the insights from financial regulators, practitioners and academics from across the social sciences. The first part traces the evolution and ongoing confusion about the meaning of 'shadow banking'. The second section draws major lessons about shadow banking as posed by the financial crisis of 2007-09, providing comparative analyses in the US and Europe, and attempts to establish why shadow banking has emerged and matured to the level of a de facto parallel financial system. Finally, the third part goes beyond current regulatory concerns about shadow banking and explains why it is 'here to stay'. This volume is of great importance to political economy, banking and international political economy.

The year 2015 witnessed significant events in the area of finance, trade and investment, which brought Asia to the centre of the world stage. The Trans-Pacific Partnership reached its basic agreement among the 12 member countries in October; the Chinese Yuan was included into the Special Drawing Rights basket of currencies at the International Monetary Fund in November; the ASEAN Economic Community came into force; and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was established with the 57 founding members in December. Within and outside the region, there is an urgent need to understand the underlying economic structures that brought about these events, which have global implications. The Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the National University of Singapore launched a series of conferences on 'Evolving Finance, Trade and Investment in Asia' with the aim of strengthening research capacity in Asia to influence regional policymaking. Looking forward, the conference will provide an annual platform for scholars to discuss the latest findings and to disseminate them to business leaders and policymakers. This book contains scholarship presented at the inaugural international conference in September 2015, and was originally published as a special issue of the International Economic Journal.

The role of the stock market in the recent global financial crisis has led many to question the way in which the modern international financial system operates. This highly topical book offers important insights into the stock market, contrasting the speculative explanation of stock market fluctuations with the conventional efficient markets hypothesis. After summarising economists' views on stock market behavior from the classical period to the present day, the authors focus on two particular explanations of stock price fluctuations. They examine in detail the mainstream neo-classical theory with its emphasis on the efficient markets hypothesis. They then compare this with the theories of Veblen, Galbraith and Keynes who consider markets as being inherently prone to speculation and crisis, in contrast to the neo-classical approach which largely ignores the instability of stock markets and particularly the crashes that have recently occurred. The authors go on to develop a speculative model to account for stock market fluctuations which provides a useful and realistic explanation of how stock price expectations are formed. This book will be welcomed by bankers, financial and monetary economists, historians of economic thought and all those interested in the causes of the recent market crashes.

Since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, the notion that capitalism has become too abstract for all but the most rarefied specialists to understand has been widely presupposed. Yet even in academic circles, the question of abstraction itself - of what exactly abstraction is, and does, under financialisation - seems to have gone largely unexplored - or has it? By putting the question of abstraction centre stage, How Abstract Is It? Thinking Capital Now offers an indispensable counterpoint to the 'economic turn' in the humanities, bringing together leading literary and cultural critics in order to propose that we may know far more about capital's myriad abstractions than we typically think we do. Through in-depth engagement with classic and cutting-edge theorists, agile analyses of recent Hollywood films, groundbreaking readings of David Foster Wallace's sprawling, unfinished novel, The Pale King, and even original poems, the contributors here suggest that the machinations and costs of finance - as well as alternatives to it - may already be hiding in plain sight. This book was originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice.

The 1997-8 Asian financial crisis exposed weaknesses in the region's national financial systems, but since then East Asia has become the world's most dynamic economic region. Domestic financial systems have developed, cross-border financial flows within the region are growing apace as demand from governments and large firms increases and as the capabilities of financial institutions develop, and governments have initiated regional cooperation aimed at preventing future crises and managing them if they occur. This book examines the economies of Asia and the Pacific with reference to financial reform and liberalization, monetary policy frameworks, banking and capital markets, regulation and supervision and macroeconomic policies. Further, it asks what lessons have been learned from both the Asian financial crisis and the recent financial crisis, how to engender financial stability in the region, and how to ensure that the benefits of economic growth and financial development reach all members of society. Across four key sections, the chapters examine the future implications of historical studies of the relationships between financial development and growth; financial development including banks, non-bank financial institutions and capital markets; how financial stability is being sought in the region; and China's plans for capital account opening and renminbi internationalization and subsequent the policy implications for China's neighbours. This book draws on papers originally presented to the 36th Pacific Trade and Development Conference held in Hong Kong in 2013, and features contributions from leading academics and economists from around the world. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Asian economics, Asia Pacific studies, international economics and international finance.

The SDGs, developed by the UN in 2012, focuses on 17 goals for the betterment of humanity and humanitarian causes. Among the core objectives of Shari'ah in Islamic finance is to offer a helping hand, emphasizing the efforts and scope of the SDGs. This book explores how Islamic ethical wealth is structured to contribute to the SDGs and an overall socio-economic impact within the principles of Maqasid al-Shari'ah. Focusing areas such as Islamic micro-finance, wealth inclusion, corporate and agro-Zakat, Awqaf, SRI Sukuk, and green Sukuk, this book will feature contributions from the leading researchers in sustainability and Islamic finance and will be of interest to scholars, researchers, industrialists, NGOs, UNDP and students studying both areas.

Hedge funds and their managers have been vilified in recent times for their high-risk activities and relative lack of regulatory oversight. A recurrent concern shared by market participants and regulators around the world is that the increasing size of the hedge fund industry coupled with potential agency problems, activist investment practices, and herding behavior may exacerbate financial instability. However, while it is frequently suggested that hedge funds are unregulated, they are in fact regulated to some degree in every country around the world. It is important to consider differences in legal and institutional settings across countries as they directly affect the structure, governance, and performance of hedge funds. In this book, the authors consider data from a multitude of countries to understand how and why hedge fund markets differ around the world. While hedge funds are hardly regulated in the US, other jurisdictions implement different and sometimes more onerous sets of regulatory requirements. As explained in the book, international differences in hedge fund regulation include, but are not limited to, minimum capitalization requirements, restrictions on the location of key service providers, and different permissible distribution channels via private placements, banks, other regulated or non-regulated financial intermediaries, wrappers, investment managers, and fund distribution companies.

Offering an analytical perspective on the design and reform of the international financial architecture, this book stresses the important role played by creditor co-ordination problems in the origin and management of crises by relating the insights of the new literature on global games to earlier work on currency crises, bank runs, and sovereign debt default. It examines the design of sovereign bankruptcy procedures, the role of the IMF in influencing creditors and debtor countries, and the currency composition of sovereign debt, and draws on recent research and policy work. The book's first part provides a critical synthesis of the literature underpinning the architecture debate. It reviews the traditional distinction between "fundamentals-based" and "sunspot-based" crises before reconciling the two using global game methods. The role of co-ordination problems in sparking costly liquidation and influencing the debtor's incentives to repay is then examined in depth and shown to lie at the heart of crisis management policy. The empirical literature on leading indicators of crisis is also critically examined and related to the architecture debate. In its second part the book examines key issues in crisis management. Suggesting that optimal reforms must set the inefficiencies of crisis against the inefficiencies of debtor moral hazard, the authors consider the relative merits of statutory and contractual solutions to sovereign debt workouts. They go on to discuss the role of the IMF in influencing private lending and debtor moral hazard, theoretically and empirically. They argue that there is no simple relationship between ex post crisis management and ex ante moral hazard, implying that the handling of financial crises is a delicate affair warranting a cautious approach by would-be architects.

Informal finance consists of nonbank financing activities, whether conducted through family and friends, local money houses, or other types of financial associations. It has provided much-needed financing to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in particular, in the face of a tightly constrained and overburdened formal banking system. Unable to obtain a bank loan, firms have relied upon individuals and informal organizations outside of the banking system to obtain financing for their ventures or working capital (operating funds). Presently there is a scarcity of information on informal finance in China and it is expected to have a significant impact upon GDP and money supply.
This book, with contributions from leading scholars, describes the evolution, characteristics, and variation of informal finance in China from American and Chinese perspectives. Literature by Jiang Shuxia, Jiang Xuzhao, and Li Jianjun has heretofore been available only in Chinese, while work by Kellee Tsai, Jianwen Liao, Harold Welsch, David Pistrui, and Sara Hsu has been available in English. For the first time, they come together to discuss informal financing and its many aspects.
Most of the essays are based upon original survey research conducted locally, as this type of data is not normally collected by the government. The papers pioneer the description and analysis of the nuances of informal finance from several perspectives; the authors look at the social, cultural, political, and economic causes of informal finance, its many variations, and its economic, personal, and political ramifications.

As from 2012, the International Monetary Institution (IMI) of the Renmin University of China publishes annual reports on the internationalization of RMB. This series of annual reports create and publish the RMB Internationalization Index (RII). Besides, they focus on one topic in each year's report. This book focuses on the offshore RMB markets. It studies several major international currencies' historical developments to summarize theoretical implications between currency internationalization process and its offshore market development. It reviews the recent development of RMB offshore markets, identifies key opportunities and challenges, and proposes some suggestions to policy makers and market practitioners. The RII will continue to rise as the RMB plays a more and more important role in international trades and financial transactions. The establishment and development of RMB offshore markets will facilitate the internationalization process of the RMB.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

At the time in which this book was first published in 1992, there was a major concern with the macro-economic implications of fiscal imbalance. As the European economies moved closer to monetary union, and Germany grappled with the fiscal pressures of unification, deficits in the United States exceeded $300 billion. In this volume the authors address this issue, using both historical case-studies and cross-national comparisons. This book will be of interest to students of economics.

This book analyses business cycles synchronization in the Euro Area (EA), one of the 3 criteria that define Optimal Currency Areas (OCAs). Even before its launch, economists questioned whether the EA has what it takes to become an OCA. The onset of the sovereign debt crisis in 2010 confirmed the challenges relating to its construction. But did the EA change over time, and what key drivers may be necessary in the future to strengthen the common currency?

Many economists and experts interpret the U.S. twin-deficits, the twin-wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2008 Great Recession that escalated the US debt to vertiginous altitudes" as the signs of time that the dollar is now set to repeat the history of the British Pound. But is really the role of the dollar" as a global currency and an international reserve asset" actually rewarded the United States with an exorbitant privilege? This book focuses on the opposite end of exorbitant privilege spectrum: the exorbitant burden the cost the very dollar reserve status impacts on the U.S. economy through the twin deficits. This economic and political science work is a rigorous quantitative analysis that demonstrates that although it is a privilege and a benefit for the US to have its currency, the dollar, as the leading world reserve currency, the privilege also proves to be a very significant economic and security burden imposed on the nation.

This book analyzes the competitive forces which dominate this major sector, and traces how the nature of competition has evolved during the last two hundred years. Through an analysis of key factors, including demand, related and supporting industries, firm strategy, structure and national rivalry, chance and government policy, the author explains how and why the locus of competitive advantage in textiles and apparel has moved from country to country, particularly in the period since 1945.

Every international negotiation bears a risk of collapse, as even among like-minded countries, different players often have different priorities and interests. This can result in conflict as states clash over certain agreement details, and their disputes can escalate and founder the entire negotiation, missing an opportunity to realize potential initiatives. However, other circumstances have witnessed the cases of successful deals. This begets a puzzle: What did these states do to salvage their talks and seal their deals? This book examines East Asian financial negotiation processes and seeks to explain why some negotiations are successful despite the risk of bargaining failure. Using the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) talks as the case study, the book analyses how states with little prior experience at dealing with certain aspects of an agreement manage to avert negotiation failure and successfully conclude their final deal. Using extensive archival research, in-depth interviews with involved negotiators and experts, and process-tracing method, it reconstructs the making of the CMIM agreement. The multi-country analysis reveals the roles played by key actors, namely China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, in shaping the agreement terms. The book goes on to argue that preventing a stalemate or succeeding in concluding arrangements like the CMIM is a product of various strategies and tactics employed by negotiators. These include employing bargaining strategies and tactics that help avoid a negotiation deadlock, and assessing the conditions under which such strategies and tactics are likely - or unlikely - to achieve the objective of avoiding bargaining failure. As a study of East Asian economic negotiation processes, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of East Asian cooperation and regionalism as well as finance, international business, international relations and international political economy.