China's emerging financial markets reflect the usual contrast between the country's measured approach toward policy, regulatory, and market reform, and the dynamic pace of rapid economic growth and development. But they also offer unusual challenges and opportunities. In the past five years, the pace of opening and reform has accelerated sharply. Recapitalization and partial privatization of the largest banks, and the allowance of some joint venture and branch operations for foreign financial institutions, are making rapid headway in developing and expanding financial services and improving access to domestic business and households. This book provides the most extensive look available at the evolving Chinese financial system. It begins with alternative perspectives on the evolution of the financial system and the broad outlines of its prospects and potential contribution to economic growth. Three articles review broad aspects of the financial system. Franklin Allen, Jun ''QJ'' Qian, Meijun Qian, and Mengxin Zhao lead off with overviews of the banking system and performance of the equity market and other institutions.

This book examines fiscal policy coordination in EMU and the required adjustments to national fiscal policies by EMU member states. It presents a coherent view of German fiscal policy following the creation of the Stability and Growth Pact in 1995-97 and the implementation of the Stability Pact in 1997. The book shows that, in the process of Europeanization, national interests have had a major impact on the formation of fiscal policy coordination. It also shows how European fiscal policy coordination has affected national fiscal policies and policy implementation in EMU, and how changes in national interests have finally launched the reform process of the original Stability Pact and a new phase or Europeanization.

This book will be of particular relevance for readers interested in a thorough analysis of international capital flows, their determinants and their macroeconomic implications. It also provides information about the origines of international financial crisis and assess proposals to overcome and avoid financial crisis in the future.The book is an outcome of a conference held at the Kiel Institute of World Economics. The papers cover the track record of financial integration, the changing structure of financial markets and the implications for macroeconomics and growth. Particular emphasis is placed on the various financial crises of the 1990s and on proposals for a reform of the international financial system.

Inspired by the experience of some advanced economies, a number of emerging market economies have recently adopted rules limiting the budget deficit, expenditure level, or indebtedness of the public sector, while others consider them for eventual adoption. This volume brings together policy analysts to discuss the rationale, suitability, and usefulness of fiscal policy rules in emerging market economies. Grouped under three main parts (political economy and macroeconomic setting; design issues at the national level; design issues at the subnational level), the chapters have a practical orientation, based on conceptual grounding. FABRIZIO BALASSONE Bank of Italy, Italy OLAV BJERKHOLT University of Oslo, Norway MIGUEL BRAUN University of San Andres, Colombia MARCO BUTI European Commission, International ANDRES CONESA Secretariat of Finance, Mexico FABRIZIO CORICELLI University of Siena, Italy ALLAN DRAZEN Tel Aviv University, Israel VALERIO ERCOLANI University of Siena, Italy DANIELE FRANCO Bank of Italy, Italy GABRIELE GIUDICE European Commission, Italy ILAN GOLDFAJN Central Bank of Brazil, Brazil CHRISTIAN Y. GONZALEZ Georgetown University, USA EDUARDO R. GUARDIA State of Sao Paulo

What are the driving forces - both endogenous and exogenous - for, and how have they influenced China's economic transformations during the past decades? This revised and updated second edition sets out to analyze and compare the operational mechanisms of the Chinese economy between the pre-- and post-reform periods and through both national and provincial dimensions. A multiregional comparison of the Chinese economy is conducted in terms of natural and human resources, institutional evolution, as well as economic and social performances. The first edition of this book was selected as the 'Best Book on Chinese Economy' by Questia librarians. -- Publisher's description.

Infrastructure and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa analyzes the extent to which, how, and how fast the infrastructure needs of the poor have been met in Sub-Saharan Africa. Estache and Wodon explore the extent to which some key policies have hurt or helped progress in trying to speed the expansions of coverage so clearly needed in the region. They focus on electricity, water, sanitation, and other services at the core of the day-to-day needs of the population, examining the extent to which reforms of the last 15-20 years have managed to reduce the infrastructure gap. They anchor their analysis on the evidence available about the macroeconomic importance of infrastructure for the region, the policies that have been adopted to accelerate coverage, and a detailed assessment of the poverty dimensions of infrastructure.

Public debt has become a severe problem for a great many economies. While the effects of tax policies on the allocation of resources are readily derived, the mechanisms that make public deficits and debt influence the economy are not so easily understood. This book elaborates on the effects of public debt starting from the intertemporal budget constraint of the government. It is shown under which conditions a government can stick to the intertemporal budget constraint and then, demonstrated how public debt affects the growth process and welfare in market economies. The effects are derived for models with complete labor markets as well as taking into account labor market imperfections. The focus in this book is on fiscal policy issues, but it also deals with monetary policy aspects. The theoretical analysis is complemented with empirical time series analyses on debt sustainability and with panel studies dealing with the relationship between public debt and economic growth.

The logic behind European monetary cooperation and integration can only be understood through an examination of French efforts to maximize their monetary power in relation to Germany and America. This book provides a detailed and historically-informed study of the motives and economic and political attitudes that shaped French policy on European developments over a 30-year period, from the collapse of the International Monetary System in the late 1960s and early 1970s through to the start of EMU on January 1, 1999.

The human imprint on the biosphere has become so pronounced in recent years that there has been talk of a new geological era, the 'Anthropocene'. Gathering contributions from some of the world's foremost heterodox economists, this book explores the new economic directions and paradigms that are required to respond to this crisis.

Since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, countries in East Asia have made efforts to promote regional monetary and financial cooperation to complement the evolving international financial architecture. This increased interest in regional monetary and financial cooperation has resulted in several initiatives - the ASEAN Surveillance Process, the ASEAN+3 Finance Ministers Process including its Chiang Mai Initiative of 2000, the Manila Framework Group and the Asia-Europe Finance Ministers Process to name a few. These developments in some ways represent a significant break from the past. Going forward the key challenge is how to set priorites and sequence developments so as to smooth the path to a new regional financial architecture. This two-volume set takes up the issue of developing a road map of policy options, both at the regional and country levels, for carrying forward the ongoing efforts in monetary and financial cooperation in East Asia. Building on a series of core reports and background papers by eminent economists and policymakers around the world commissioned under an ADB technical assistance project, the books explore what is feasible and desirable in regional monetary and financial cooperation and lays out a road map for putting the concept into action over the next several years. Volume 1 contains an overview by Peter Montiel, and three core studies by Olam Chaipravat, Eric Girardin, and Takatoshi Ito and Yung-Chul Park. Volume 2 contains background papers by Robert J. Barro; Elbliog'onore Boiscuvier and Alfred Steinherr; Barry Eichengreen; Jeffrey A. Frankel; Eric Girardin; Jong-Wha Lee; Yung-Chul Park and Kwanho Shin; Ronald McKinnon; Eiji Ogawa, Takatoshi Ito, and YuriNagataki Sasaki; Ramkishen Rajan and Reza Siregar; Yunjong Wang and Wing Thye Woo; and Charles Wyplosz. The volumes and the study on which they were based were conceptualized, supervised, and coordinated by Pradumna B. Rana and Srinivasa Madhur.

This study examines the relative successes and failures of reform programs in Poland and Czechoslovakia, as well as the causes of these successes and failures. It provides a synthesized and comparative study of efforts to achieve systemic economic transformation. The work begins with the identification of background forces in these two countries--cultural, social, political, and economic--analyzing their impact on micro-responsiveness to reform policies. Then, within the framework of these forces, the author traces the causes of the two economies' reform failures during and since the Communist era. The central purpose of the work is to provide objective lessons for economies attempting systemic transformations or implementing development policies. This work will be of interest to scholars and policymakers in development economics and comparative economic systems and policies.

In this book, a leading observer of the international financial system assesses official efforts to address the problem of financial crises in emerging markets. Professor Eichengreen describes the progress that has been made in limiting the frequency of crises and strengthening the international financial system. He also shows that initiatives in this area have unintentionally made life more difficult for the poorest countries. He therefore argues that efforts to limit the threat to the international financial system need to be linked to an increase in development assistance. Another place where official efforts have fallen short, the author argues is in creating new ways of resolving crises. He shows that official financing through the International Monetary Fund is part of the problem. The IMF's financial rescues allow investors to escape without losses, in turn encouraging them to lend without due regard to the risks. This only makes the international system more crises prone. That the IMF has repeatedly come under pressure to bail out crisis countries reflects the absence of other acceptable ways of resolving the financial difficulties of emerging markets. Not lending threatens to expose the international financial system to a disorderly and disruptive crisis. At the same time, radical new alternatives like an international bankruptcy court or international lender of last resort would create more problems than they solved-even if there was the political appetite for such ambitious schemes, which there is not. The author concludes that the best way to enhance the efficiency and stability of international financial markets is by pushing for changes to the provisions of loan agreements that will enhance the capacity of creditors and debtors to resolve financial problems on their own.

This volume is a collection of papers presented at the first meeting of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality (ECINEQ). The Society??'s aims are to ???provide an international forum for all researchers interested in the study of economic inequality and related fields, bringing together the diversity of perspectives.??? The conference was held in Palma de Mallorca, Spain in July 2005. Over eighty parallel sessions were offered, providing novel and interesting work from both mature scholars and as well as new PhD???s.
With so much quality work from which to choose, it was necessary to limit the scope of Research on Economic Inequality, Volume 14. The first five papers all employ Spanish data and cover topics such as child poverty, social preferences toward redistribution, social exclusion, and multidimensional poverty. The next three papers examine inequality in the EU using alternative methodologies. Chapter Nine explores poverty dynamics among the elderly in Italy. Chapter Ten presents and extends the ???state of the art??? in multidimensional inequality measurement. Chapters Eleven and Twelve contribute to the theoretical underpinnings of inequality measurement. Chapters Thirteen through Fifteen contain analytical papers focused on evaluating the effects of public policy on poverty and inequality. The final two chapters use the questionnaire-experimental approach to examine individuals??? distributional preferences.
*Part of the Research on Economic Inequality series.
*Presents papers form the inaugural meeting of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality (ECINEQ)
*Provides an international forum for all researchers interested in the study of economicinequality and related fields
*Brings together a diversity of perspectives

Topicality of Asian economy has refused to fade for almost four decades; if anything it has been levitating. The Asian economy has changed markedly since the economic and financial crisis of 1997-1998 and is continuing to evolve. As a scholarly subject matter, Asian economy has not stopped attracting academicians, policy mandarins, decision makers in the arena of business and students of Asian economy. The Asian crisis was a cataclysmic event for the region and brought to the surface several systemic limitations, like those in the financial sector, corporate governance, regulatory oversight, legal framework, and exchange rate management. Managers of Asian economy need to get to the bottom of these acutely problematical systemic issues. Additionally, Asian economies need to change with the demands of time and devise their post crisis development strategy. Asia's growth model, that served it so well for four decades, is overdue for renewal so that it can re-strengthen its bonds with the ever-evolving regional and global economic reality. The old growth model is likely to be less relevant and effective in the post-crisis future of the Asian economies. feature of Asian Economy and Finance: A Post-Crisis Perspective is that unlike most Asia-related books, it is written in a comprehensive and authoritative manner and covers large areas of Asian macro-economy and finance. The noteworthy areas of focus include global and intra-regional trade and investment, as well as financial and monetary aspects. In-depth discussions have been provided on regional integration through expanding trade, financial flows, regional production networks, and financial and monetary co-operation. In taking a contemporary or post-crisis view of the Asian economy, this book offers the newest knowledge related to relevant themes on the Asian economies as well as the latest concepts. In a succinct manner, this book deals with the principal normative and positive strands with which one need to be properly familiar in this subject area. This tightly written volume covers a great deal of ground and imparts knowledge on the Asian economy related themes to students, researchers and policy makers alike. The book is neither overly technical nor model-oriented. analysis style, which stops short of mathematical formulations and econometric modeling. Many students and other readers who have good analytical minds and sound knowledge of economic principles feel lost in mathematical formulations. This writing style makes it accessible to a much larger number of readers.

Monetary Policy and Taiwan's Economy questions whether the Asian crisis could have been avoided through the application of recommendations highlighted by the contributors. The conclusion reached is that in an abstract world, perhaps; but in the world in which we live; no. It is argued that the proposals made could certainly contribute to improved policy, albeit effecting marginal improvements rather than ground breaking changes.The contributors demonstrate that proficient monetary policy and banking regulation can be achieved through sound economic analysis that takes into account: monetary aggregates in monetary policy the role of exchange rate policies in the Asian crisis the relationship between the exchange rate, capital flows and central bank intervention similarities between the restructuring of banking systems in Asia and in Eastern Europe following the fall of communism. This book will appeal to academics and researchers of macroeconomics - especially those with a particular interest in monetary theory and policy. Economic analysts, commercial banks, financial institutions and specialists in financial crisis will also find the book to be a fascinating read.

The global demographic transition presents marked asymmetries as poor, emerging, and advanced countries are undergoing different stages of transition. Emerging countries are demographically younger than advanced economies. This youth is favorable to growth and generates a demographic dividend. However, the future of emerging economies will bring a decline in the working-age share and a rise in the older population, as is the case in today's developed world. Hence, developing countries must get rich before getting old, while advanced economies must try not to become poorer as they age. Asymmetric Demography and the Global Economy contributes to our understanding of why this demographic transition matters to the domestic macroeconomics and global capital movements affect the asset accumulation, growth potential, current account, and the economy's international investment position. This collaborative collection approaches these questions from the perspective of "systemically important" emerging countries i.e., members of the G20 but considers both the national and the global sides of the problem.

In the late 1980s, as the empirical appeal of macro-economic exchange rate models began to fade, a few people including Professor Charles Goodhart at the London School of Economics and researchers at Olsen & Associates in Zurich, started to collect intra-daily exchange rate data. The resulting database provides new insight into the foreign exchange markets and thereby opens up previously unexplored avenues of research. Intra-Daily Exchange Rate Movements presents an extensive study of the Olsen & Associates database and is one of the first monographs in this exciting new area. This book aims to provide a systematic study of the characteristics of intra-daily exchange rate data as well as an empirical investigation into different approaches of modelling the exchange rate movements. First, the author describes empirical insights, which range from the distributional issues of exchange rate data to the impact of macroeconomic fundamentals and institutional characteristics. This leads to a survey of the main stylized facts. Using the O&A database, Guillaume then presents a systematic investigation of the empirical performance of three broad categories of models: macro-economic models using an extension of chaos theory, stochastic models including the GARCH and time-deformation models, and technical analysis. The book shows how these approaches can be used to model intra-daily exchange rate movements and highlights some of the pitfalls inherent in such an exercise. In an area where literature remains controversial, this book hopes to trigger further inquiries into the suitability of these different approaches to modelling.

This book provides an analysis of the global economic crisis from an Asian perspective. It examines the impacts of the policy measures adopted, the remaining challenges in rebalancing the global economy, the next steps in regional economic integration in Asia, and issues related to reform of the international financial architecture.

Since the inflationary 1970's, studies of monetary policy have concentrated almost exclusively on price-level stabilization and the avoidance of nominal shocks. In the aftermath of the collapse of financial bubbles in various parts of the world, the accomplishments and limitations of this dominant approach are debated in this volume edited by Axel Leijonhufvud, with contributions by a number of monetary economists, including Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas.

"Euro on Trial looks back - to the aspirations of the founders - and forward - to the possibility of reform or splitting up. After five years of experience with the new currency, new insights are possible into the old arguments for and against union. Monetary union is reversible in part or in whole and this book assesses the costs and benefits. Brown examines several mainstream scenarios for the future of the euro in these essential readings for market practitioners as well as academics. For example, how long will the euro survive? The author shows that the answer depends principally on Germany. Any of the small or medium-sized economies could leave monetary union without threatening its existence. But were Germany to pull out it is highly doubtful whether there would be a core of countries that would perserve inside. Germany's membership so far has brought much disappointment. How many more years of disillusion are required before the question of EMU reform or break-up enters the mainstream of German political debate?

This book is based on the conference "EMU and the Outside World," held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), December 11, 1998. The conference was organized by the Swiss Institute for Business Cycle Research (KOF), which is supported jointly by the ETH and the Swiss Society for Business Cycle Research (SGK), an organization comprising representatives from private industry, the Swiss National Bank and public authorities. On the eve of the final stage of European Economic and Mone tary Union (EMU), Zurich seemed to be a particularly appropriate place for such a conference. On the one hand, given its location and economic and financial links with the euro area, Switzerland is one of the "outside coun tries" most affected by EMU. On the other hand, it was nowhere else than in Zurich where the vision of "a United States of Europe" was expressed for the first time by Winston Churchill in his speech on September 19, 1946. For many EMU is a step in that direction, whether welcome or not. Most of the papers appearing in this volume were presented at the con ference and have been revised and updated. Three contributions, chapter 11- 13, were commissioned specially for this publication. Besides the authors of the chapters, special thanks are due to Guido Boller, Robert McCauley, Umberto Schwarz, and Charles Wyplosz."

Utz-Peter Reich addresses economists interested in a sound empirical foundation for their theoretical concepts. He investigates economic value and determines how value is defined in theory, which is microeconomic, and how it is measured in practice in national accounts. He demonstrates that microeconomic theory is not made to guide or interpret national accounts figures and he offers an alternative theory.

The recent dramatic wave of terrorist attacks has further focussed worldwide attention on the money laundering phenomena. The objective of this book is to offer the first systematic analysis of the economics of money laundering and its connection with terrorism finance. The authors first present the general principles of money laundering. They go on to illustrate an institutional and empirical framework that is useful in evaluating the causes and effects of money laundering phenomena in the banking and financial markets. They also analyse the design of the national and international policies aimed at combating them. The book focuses on several crucial issues and offers an analysis of each, including: * modelling the behaviour and process of making dirty money appear clean, hiding the originally criminal or illegal source of the economic activity * demonstrating how the financing of terrorism resembles money laundering in some respects and differs from it in others * explaining how the banking and financial industry can play a pivotal role for the development of the criminal sector as a preferential vehicle for money laundering * showing how schemes of international economics and of tax competition can be applied to black finance issues, claiming that competition for criminal money can lead to a race to the bottom * building up indicators of money laundering attractiveness among developed and emerging countries, with a particular attention on the role of the Offshore centres * dealing with anti-money laundering and counter terrorism finance (AML-CTF) enforcement problems, with a focus on Europe and the USA. Black Finance will be a valuable and accessible tool for scholars and academics, principally in economics, though also in politics and law, as well as for regulators and supervisory institutions. All royalties from this book to go to The Collegiate Foundation for Life

Money is the most important human invention after language. It provides tokens for the faith we have in each other and society – but that trust has been violated repeatedly throughout history by the middlemen and authorities we rely upon in order to transact with each other.

Now a new kind of money promises to rescue us from these tyrants and return us to the roots of money, without relying on third-parties. Instead of putting our faith in banks and governments, we can trust math.

Simon Dingle has been working with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies since 2011, designing products that make it easier to engage with this new world of money. He is also a broadcaster, writer and speaker who makes complex subjects simple for his audiences. Having led the product team at one of the world’s first Bitcoin exchanges and on other popular fintech products, Simon continues to design and invest in projects that make money more fair, this in addition to his weekly radio show on 5FM that helps people with technology more generally.

In his first book Simon looks at the evolution of human trust that not only explains how cryptocurrencies work and the origins of Bitcoin, but how you can use these networks to take control of your own financial universe. A highly readable account of a complex subject, In Math We Trust is all you need to find out about the future of money.