Oliver Landmann Nobody needs to be convinced of the importance of banking for the Swiss economy. The financial sector grew well above average in the past decade and now accounts for almost 10 % of GDP. Compared to the economy-wide average, it creates more than double as much value added per employee and it is a major contributor to Swiss ex port revenues. But this is no cause for complacency. The industry is subjf: ct to rapid change as the competitive climate has become rougher nationally and internationally. Major structural weaknesses have corne to the surface which raise serious questions about the extent of the required structural adjustments. Thus, banking was an ideal candidate for a major case study in the framework of the National Research Programme No. 28 which is devoted to Switzerland's external economic challenges. The programme was commissioned by the Swiss government and is carried out by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The research project on the fmancial sector was directed by Professors Niklaus Blattner, Hans Genberg and Alexander Swoboda who assembled a team of research economists from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, the International Centre for Monetary and Banking Studies (both at Geneva) and the Labour and Industrial Economics Research Unit at the University of Basel. This joint research effort has yielded an impressive crop of descriptive data, analytical insights and policy-oriented conclusions."

This volume provides a topical and up-to-date introduction to the principal Western financial markets and institutions, particularly those in the USA, Europe and Japan. The scope is comprehensive and topics covered include: commercial and investment banking, money and insurance, options, futures and other derivative products. A glossary of financial terms is also provided, and a final chapter surveys the key trends and issues in the market today.;A second edition is available: "An Introduction to Global Financial Markets" (hardback: 0-333-69584-4; paperback: 0-333-69394-9).

Recurrent instability has characterized the global financial system since the 1980s, eventually leading to the current global financial crisis. This instability and the resultant disruptions - sovereign debt defaults, exchange rate misalignments, financial market illiquidity and asset price bubbles - are linked, in this book, to the shortcomings of the global financial system which tends to generate cycles of boom and bust in credit flows. These cycles are set in motion by the monetary impulses of major industrial countries and are amplified and propagated through the operation of global financial markets. Fabrizio Saccomanni argues that to counter such systemic instability requires that national authorities give adequate weight to financial stability objectives when formulating their monetary and regulatory policies. He maintains that appropriate multilateral strategies to deal with unsustainable trends in credit aggregates and asset prices should be devised in the International Monetary Fund in the context of a strengthened framework to deal with global payments imbalances and exchange rate misalignments. Providing a comprehensive historical and analytical survey of the causes, consequences and possible cures of international financial instability, this book will be of great interest to students and academics of international economics and finance. It will also appeal to financial market participants and analysts, government officials and central bankers as a comprehensive survey of the relevant academic literature and of the state of the policy debate.

European central bank policy is already taking place today in an informal way. It comprises, in short, European exchange rate management and interest rate policy decisions within and without the European Monetary System (EMS). A focal point of such policy actions are the money market operating targets of European Central Banks. Those central bank policies appear to be dominated, however, by the Deutsche Bundesbank. This has caused recurring critical discussion of European asymmetries and German leadership in monetary stabilization pOlicies, before and after the EMS turbulences of September 1992. However, it should be pointed out that German dominance has increasingly evolved in a cooperative way, ever since the Committee of European Central Bank Governors began to meet regularly in 1964; the Basle-Nyborg accord of 1987 formed a further stage of cooperative efforts within the EMS. Presently, a small group of countries (including Benelux and Austria) generally follows, after prior 'concertation', German monetary policy patterns. In this narrow sense, there exists a European central bank policy within a "Deutsche-Mark-Zone." In a broader sense, European central bank policy is shaped, after proper consultation, by monetary cooperation between the larger EMS countries, but once again dominantly influenced by Germany; recent problems of highjnterest rates in France and elsewhere due to (relative) restrictive German monetary pOlicies are striking examples. German monetary dominance, in the narrow or broad sense, obviously creates, in the long-run, an untenable situation in the eyes of European partner countries.

The book refers to two transitions. Eastern European economies, including CIS republics, are in the process of transition to a market economy. EC countries are on the way to implementing an economic and monetary union and many of them would welcome a political union. EC countries cannot be separated from EFTA member countries, nor Europe from the rest of the world. The two transitions are different in kind, and in some respects are opposed. While Western Europe is searching for more trade and monetary integration, i.e. for more globalisation, Eastern economies are exposed to disintegration. At the same time the East is influenced by the West and both transitions have some common challenges: the search for a model of capitalism, intermediate between laissez-faire and interventionism; the search for competition as a discipline and for efficiency. The book focuses on privatization, economic reform, relationships between banks and industry, the role of the State, the dynamics of banking and financial sectors, monetary reform, the independence of the central bank, the European monetary union, and East-West economic and financial relations. This collection of papers, authored by members of universities, financial institutions and international organisations, is of outstanding interest for policy makers, executives and academics.

This book investigates issues of policy design in open economics. The performance of simple alternative policy rules is analysed in the context of theoretical models using both analytical solutions and numerical simulation techniques. One of the substantive contributions of the research is that policy evaluation should take into account, among other things, the implications of different rules for foreign wealth and the exchange rate. Hence the open economy models presented in the book include wealth effects and the current account. The evaluation of the alternative policy proposals is carried out within the framework of a "small" individual country and in the broader context of policy coordination. This book should be of interest to economics departments.

This text analyzes US-Japan relations amidst the changing nature of power and international relations. Chapters explore the relative successes and shortcomings of American liberalism and Japanese neomercantilism, the bilateral trade duels over finance, high technology and agriculture, and the costs and benefits of foreign investment and military spending. The book concludes with suggestions for a systemic and radical overhaul of American policies toward itself, the global economy, and Japan. William R. Nester has also written "Japan's Growing Power Over East Asia and the World Economy", "The Foundations of Japanese Power", "Japanese Industrial Targeting", and "Japan and the Third World".

This book brings together leading economists to analyze present economic issues and further debate on the need for sound economic policies to avoid a crash on a global scale. Subjects covered include: the US twin deficit, Western European economic integration, Eastern Europe's transition towards a market economy, the debt burden of the less developed countries, the growing and deepening discrimination against the rest of the world by new homogeneous areas such as the North America free trade area, and the new Europe and Japan. These are the issues at the head of global disequilibrium in the world economy.

As an instrument of international economic policy, conditionality is on the increase. During the last decade the World Bank, the bilateral aid agencies and more recently the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have made extensive use of conditionality as an instrument for making their finance more effective. At the same time, the scope of conditionality has widened to take in political and environmental considerations as well as the traditional concerns of economic policy. However, the effectiveness of such conditionality, either in changing policies or in improving the state of recipient economies, has seldom been examined. This book brings together theoretical and empirical analyses of conditionality and its side-effects by major donors, countributors from recipient countries and independent observers of the international finance scene. These analyses show that donors must pursue alternative objectives to the enforcement of conditionality, such as quick disbursement, and that the bargaining power of recipients has increased. While accepting the need for adjustment in developing countries, therefore the contributors are generally sceptical concerning the degree of suc

Discusses the basic conventions of foreign exchange and the profits and losses that result from fluctuations in rates. The wide range of financial products developed to facilitate foreign exchange management are also considered. The text is aimed at those involved in the treasury function and provides a reference source for brokers, dealers and traders and those involved in forex trading, hedging, research and strategic planning.

With diminishing profits in traditional areas of banking, security houses are turning to other means in order to remain competitive. This book examines the changes in the world of international security lending as European financial markets move towards a more global perspective, and the market for international securities lending continues to develop. New opportunities are appearing for institutions to increase their yields on international equity and debt securities by lending out securities for a fee. Securities lending enables institutions to offset settlement costs as well as custodian fees. In this manner, a back office operation can be transformed into a profit generating concern.;Borrowers, lenders and intermediaries should be aware of the implications of these cross-border transactions. Important issues include the tax treatment of international lending transactions, what type of transactions are available and most importantly, what the financial risks involved are and the profitable opportunities for arbitrage.

This volume contains the proceedings of a conference held in 1990 on the theme of Exchange Rate Regimes and Currency Unions. The papers are all devoted to theoretical and empirical analyses of systems of fixed and flexible exchange rates, to the role of central bank behaviour and other government policies in such systems, to the prospects, workings and effects of a European monetary system, and to topics of capital mobility and economic integration in general.

Three major challenges confront European policymakers and financial systems; (1) to preserve and strengthen policy coordination between the countries participating and the European Monetary System; (2) to design the future structure of the Economic and Monetary Union; (3) to implement constructive economic and financial responses to the major economic and political reform in Eastern Europe. The purpose of this book is to present a comprehensive analysis of these challenges, focusing on the relationships between fiscal policies on the one hand and financial systems on the other. The basis for the work is formed by the discussions, which took place at the 16th Colloquium of the SocietA(c) Universitaire EuropA(c)enne de Recherches FinanciA]res (SUERF). Private savings and the taxation of income from capital, imbalances in public sector budgets and their impact on financial systems, international resource transfers and the respective roles of governments and private capital flows, and the policy mix in the transition to Economic and Monetary Union are central themes of the book. This collection of papers, authored by members of the university, private financial sector and national and international policymaking communities, is of central importance to policymakers, bankers, financial executives, and academics.

"Once upon a longish time ago, Swiss bankers were solemn men to whom you took the money stashed under your mattress so Oliver Landmann they could stash it under theirs. Not now." (The Economist, February 2nd, 1991) As The Economist has recognized, the banking business is subject to thorough change. Traditional competitive advantages are lost, new ones must be sought. And above all, the rapid globalization of fmancial markets in the recent past has greatly intensified international competition in banking. In view of these developments, the issue of competitiveness in banking has become an urgent research priority. The contributions collected in this conference volume present the ftrst results of a joint research project of the Labour and Industrial Economics Research Unit at the University of Basel, the International Centre for Monetary and Banking Studies, and the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva on the Swiss Financial Sector. TIle Conference was held in Basel on May 16 - 17, 1991. The research project, directed by Professors Alexander Swoboda, Niklaus Blattner and Hans Genberg, is part of the National Research Programme Nr. 28, commissioned by the Swiss Government and administered by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The programme is devoted to the external economic challenges faced by Switzerland. The notion of competitiveness is at the very core of this research programme.

"The Leaderless Economy" reveals why international financial cooperation is the only solution to today's global economic crisis. In this timely and important book, Peter Temin and David Vines argue that our current predicament is a catastrophe rivaled only by the Great Depression. Taking an in-depth look at the history of both, they explain what went wrong and why, and demonstrate why international leadership is needed to restore prosperity and prevent future crises.

Temin and Vines argue that the financial collapse of the 1930s was an "end-of-regime crisis" in which the economic leader of the nineteenth century, Great Britain, found itself unable to stem international panic as countries abandoned the gold standard. They trace how John Maynard Keynes struggled for years to identify the causes of the Great Depression, and draw valuable lessons from his intellectual journey. Today we are in the midst of a similar crisis, one in which the regime that led the world economy in the twentieth century--that of the United States--is ending. Temin and Vines show how America emerged from World War II as an economic and military powerhouse, but how deregulation and a lax attitude toward international monetary flows left the nation incapable of reining in an overleveraged financial sector and powerless to contain the 2008 financial panic. Fixed exchange rates in Europe and Asia have exacerbated the problem.

"The Leaderless Economy" provides a blueprint for how renewed international leadership can bring today's industrial nations back into financial balance--domestically and between each other.

The conclusion reached in this book is that the debt crisis which has plagued the world economy for the past ten years is due to the inherent fragility of financial markets. Governments, financial institutions and borrowers, including developing countries, have simply expected too much from these markets. In a world of volatile interest rates, exchange rates and uncertain government policy, it is virtually impossible for financial institutions to effectively distinguish fundamental shifts in economic activity from random shocks. Therefore mistakes, when identified, are corrected only with a long lag. In addition to a detailed analysis of this thesis, the book contains an evaluation of recent proposals to harmonize international bank regulations and an extensive discussion of how financial markets are absorbing the huge losses which have emanated from the inability of borrowers to meet their debt service payments.

Securitisation of assets has probably been the single most revolutionary development in the capital markets in the last ten years. This financing technique has now produced a mature market, not now restricted to the US. Securitisation analyses the depth and liquidity of this market by way of discussion of prominent issues by leading practitioners from the UK, US, Europe and other significant markets.

The German bond market is one of the world's most liquid and diversified capital markets. As the world's debt and derivative products become more closely linked, investors and traders are increasingly more interested in the security offered by German government debt, as well as the profitable opportunities available. This book is designed to appeal to bond traders in major financial centres, Erobond invesors, arbitrageurs, basic traders and repo market participants. Daniel Corrigan is the co-author of Gilts.

Financial instability threatens the global economy. The volatility of capital movements across national borders has led many observers to argue for a reformed "global financial architecture," a body of consistent rules and institutions to prevent financial crises. Yet regulators have a decidedly mixed record in their attempts to create global standards for the financial system. David Andrew Singer seeks to explain the varying pressures on regulatory agencies to negotiate internationally acceptable rules and suggests that the variation is largely traceable to the different domestic political pressures faced by regulators.

In Regulating Capital, Singer provides both a theory of the effects of domestic pressures on international regulation and a detailed analysis of regulators' attempts at international rulemaking in banking, securities, and insurance. Singer addresses the complexities of global finance in an accessible style, and he does not turn away from the more dramatic aspects of globalization; he makes clear the international implications of bank failures and stock-market crashes, the rise of derivatives, and the catastrophic financial losses caused by Hurricane Katrina and the events of September 11.

The financial services revolution has transformed what was once a backwater into a glamorous and dangerous part of modern economies. Intense competition and ferocious struggles for advantage in world markets are the signs of revolutionary change. Michael Moran's book breaks new ground by examining the politics of that revolution. Moran compares the struggles between private interests and public agencies in three great world financial centres - New York, London and Tokyo.

Covering the years 1971-89 the book presents the first substantial analysis of the enormous international expansion of Japanese banks. It is therefore an invaluable source of information for academics and businessmen alike. The focus on their presence in Europe and the assessment of implications after 1992 is a perspective never applied before. Two-and-a-half years of research in London, Frankfurt and Tokyo have resulted in the development of a systematic approach to identify the key pressures shaping their strategies.

The development of international financial centers (IFCs) has paralleled the rapid expansion of international banking and Eurocurrency activities. During the past decade and a half, the international banking and financial markets have experienced phenomenal growth along with the parallel expansion of IFCs. The size of the Eurocurrency market grew from $110 billion in 1970 to over $4,000 billion by 1987, while the total international assets of all banking institutions rose from $130 billion to $4,800 billion during the same period. Some of the preeminent IFCs are playing a major role in the international financial markets, as demonstrated by the size of their international assets: Bahamas ($144 billion), Cayman Islands ($174 billion), Singapore ($150 billion), Hong Kong ($130 billion), Bahrain ($46 billion), and Panama ($32 billion). The patterns of Euroborrowing and Eurolending activities in these IFCs have been undergoing major changes. These changes came about as a result of the introduction of the floating exchange rate system in 1973, recent financial deregulation, internationalization of the financial markets, securitization of financial assets and liabilities, and global financial innovations. Since the pioneering work of Kindleberger in 1974 on the formation of financial centers, there has not been a comprehensive study to reflect the recent developments, trends and the mystique that have surrounded the IFCs' functions and operations in the international money and capital markets.

The present volume contains the texts of the papers and criti cal commentary presented at the one-day conference "Financing the world economy in the nineties" at Tilburg University (23 March 1988). This conference was organized by the Post-graduate School of Banking and Finance of "The Tilburg Institute of Advanced Studies" (T .I.A.S.) which is closely associated to Tilburg University. It should be borne in mind that all the chapters were written before March 1988. Although some were revised later, none of the authors has been asked to include develop ments which have occurred since. To achieve a better understanding of the current financial imbalances in the world economy and its consequences and to discuss the alternatives to correct these imbalances, this conference brought to gether outstanding authorities from the academic world, from the inter national supervisors, and from the industrial companies and the banks. After the editor's introduction about the external disequilib ria in the world economy and the burden of economic adjustment, Chapter 1 is the text of the opening address by Dr. Witteveen. He calls atten tion to the central issue, which financing needs that we can see now may persist into the nineties and how can they be met? In this context he mentions the U.S.-current account deficit, the need for stable exchange rates and the international debt problem."

Understanding macroeconomic developments and policies in the twenty-first century is daunting: policy-makers face the combined challenges of supporting economic activity and employment, keeping inflation low and risks of financial crises at bay, and navigating the ever-tighter linkages of globalization. Many professionals face demands to evaluate the implications of developments and policies for their business, financial, or public policy decisions. Macroeconomics for Professionals provides a concise, rigorous, yet intuitive framework for assessing a country's macroeconomic outlook and policies. Drawing on years of experience at the International Monetary Fund, Leslie Lipschitz and Susan Schadler have created an operating manual for professional applied economists and all those required to evaluate economic analysis.