This book presents a history of Western monetary systems and explains why the system was preferred to a gold standard before 1800. Professor Redish argues that the technological ability to issue fiduciary monies, and a commitment mechanism to prevent opportunistic governments changing the ratio between the currency and a unit of gold, were (frequently overlooked) prerequisites for the emergence of the Classical gold standard. The simplicity of the gold standard, a monetary system where there is a fixed ratio between a weight of gold and a unit of currency, makes it an obvious focus for discussion of commodity money systems, and for contrasts with today's fiat money regimes.

This book argues that Keynesian economists have betrayed Keynes' theory and policy conclusions, and that the world has been misled about those policies. Keynesians have focused attention on policies for dealing with effects of economic failure as they arise, whereas Keynes was concerned with the cause and then the prevention of economic failure.

Beginning 30 years ago American citizens were allowed to own and exchange gold in any form, something they had not been able to do for the previous 40 years. Restrictions on gold began with a series of actions intended to buttress the collapsing economy of the 1930s, including executive and legislative action forbidding the private ownership of and trading in gold and abrogating "gold clauses" in contracts--obligations payable in gold or in dollars measured by gold. All of these actions were subsequently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. They have profound implications for us today.

This book provides a full and thoughtful consideration of all these issues, including the economic and legal history of the events of the 1930s, the effects of those events on government and private practices since that time, the economics of gold clauses and other indexing devices, and the anticipated impact of the legalization of gold ownership. It includes chapters by James M. Buchanan and T. Nicolaus Tideman, Milton Friedman, Harry G. Johnson, Ralph K. Winter, and Gerald T. Dunne, as well as discussions by Allan Meltzer, Karl Brunner, Armen Alchian, Lester Chandler, and David Meiselman among others.

The diverse points of view represented make this book valuable to a broad spectrum of people concerned with the relationship between legal and economic policy; with the role of money in times of depression or inflation; and with the importance of gold itself in international and domestic economic systems. It will be important to economists concerned with international trade, macroeconomics, monetary economics; legal scholars concerned with problems of constitutional law, international trade, and the theory of contracts; and to that large group of people who are interested in precious metal that has long been central to human affairs.

"Henry G. Manne" is dean and university professor emeritus at George Mason University. He has published many books and articles and is an Honorary Life Member of the American Law and Economics Association. He is considered an expert in insider trading, legal education, law and economics.

"Roger LeRoy Miller" is associated with the Institute for University Studies in Arlington, Texas. Some of his most recent books include "Money, Banking and Financial Markets" (with David D. VanHoose), "Business Law Today: The Essentials" (with Gaylord A. Jentz) and "Economics Today."

Monetary union in Europe started in 1999. This book contains eleven papers and three review essays, which analyse a spectrum of empirical, theoretical, institutional and political aspects of the design and impact of fiscal policy in EMU. The contributors are some of the most experienced analysts in the field. Topics covered include the need for and consequences of fiscal coordination, constraints on national deficits and debt levels (the Stability Pact), and the role of fiscal federalism and insurance. The importance of coordinating fiscal and monetary policies is also considered in depth. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in EMU and the development of European fiscal policy.

Adair Turner became chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority just as the global financial crisis struck in 2008, and he played a leading role in redesigning global financial regulation. In this eye-opening book, he sets the record straight about what really caused the crisis. It didn't happen because banks are too big to fail--our addiction to private debt is to blame. Between Debt and the Devil challenges the belief that we need credit growth to fuel economic growth, and that rising debt is okay as long as inflation remains low. In fact, most credit is not needed for economic growth--but it drives real estate booms and busts and leads to financial crisis and depression. Turner explains why public policy needs to manage the growth and allocation of credit creation, and why debt needs to be taxed as a form of economic pollution. Banks need far more capital, real estate lending must be restricted, and we need to tackle inequality and mitigate the relentless rise of real estate prices. Turner also debunks the big myth about fiat money--the erroneous notion that printing money will lead to harmful inflation. To escape the mess created by past policy errors, we sometimes need to monetize government debt and finance fiscal deficits with central-bank money. Between Debt and the Devil shows why we need to reject the assumptions that private credit is essential to growth and fiat money is inevitably dangerous. Each has its advantages, and each creates risks that public policy must consciously balance.

It is estimated that between 2 and 5 per cent of global GDP (over $3 trillion) is laundered by criminals around the world every year. Once thought to be a problem which only affected banks and the financial services sector, high profile cases, such as the recent leak of the Panama Papers in 2016, have thrust the issue into the public arena, and governments around the world are being forced to put robust systems and controls in place. Anti-Money Laundering offers a cost-effective self-development tool for the busy compliance professional eager to progress their career and in need of an accessible, practical and jargon-free introduction to anti-money laundering (AML). Anti-Money Laundering offers a practical guide to navigate the maze of requirements needed to counter money laundering in an organization. This book separates the different elements of AML practice, featuring a range of case studies and scenarios highlighting issues and best practices around the world. The text demonstrates that it is by foresight and methodology that AML can be mitigated, and provides clarity on complex points to better enable readers to gain the expertise they need to achieve success in practice.

This book contains a collection of Michael D. Bordo's essays written singly and with colleagues on the classical gold standard and related regimes based directly or indirectly on gold convertibility. The gold standard (and its variants) was the basis for both international and domestic monetary arrangements from the third quarter of the nineteenth century until 1971 when President Nixon closed the US gold window, effectively ending the Bretton Woods International Monetary System. Although the gold standard and its variants are now history, it still has great appeal for policymakers and scholars.

The U.S. dollar has served as the key currency of the international economic/financial system for over fifty years. This study assesses the proposition that the series of U.S. current-account deficits over the last twenty years will shortly exhaust the capability of the dollar to continue as the key currency. The evidence in support of the proposition is strong. The implications of exhaustion will be serious and need to be addressed quickly.

This title, first published in 1970, provides a comprehensive account of the public finance system in Britain. As well as providing a concise outline of the monetary system as a basis for the realistic understanding of public finance, the author also describes the pattern of government expenditure and revenue in the twentieth-century and goes on to give a detailed account of the taxation system up until April 1969. This title will be of interest to students of monetary economics.

This comprehensive guide serves to illuminate the rise and development of FinTech in Sweden, with the Internet as the key underlying driver. The multiple case studies examine topics such as: the adoption of online banking in Sweden; the identification and classification of different FinTech categories; process innovation developments within the traditional banking industry; and the Venture Capital (VC) landscape in Sweden, as shown through interviews with VC representatives, mainly from Sweden but also from the US and Germany, as well as offering insight into the companies that are currently operating in the FinTech arena in Sweden. The authors address questions such as: How will the regulatory landscape shape the future of FinTech companies? What are the factors that will likely drive the adoption of FinTech services in the future? What is the future role of banks in the context of FinTech and digitalization? What are the policies and government initiatives that aim to support the FinTech ecosystem in Sweden? Complex concepts and ideas are rendered in an easily digestible yet thought-provoking way. The book was initiated by the IIS (the Internet Foundation in Sweden), an independent organization promoting the positive development of the Internet in the country. It is also responsible for the Internet's Swedish top-level domain .se, including the registration of domain names, and the administration and technical maintenance of the national domain name registry. The book illustrates how Sweden acts (or does not act) as a competitive player in the global FinTech arena, and is a vital addition to students and practitioners in the field.

When the overall economic pie is not growing, then how it is shared out becomes more important. This book is a collection of empirical and theoretical papers by a distinguished set of international authors about the personal distribution of welfare and household production. Comparisons of poverty, income inequality and income capacity across countries in Europe and North America are the basis of Part I. Three chapters introduce subjective (non-monetary) approaches to the assessment of personal economic welfare. In Part III new results about the measurement of inequality and poverty are derived. Part V explores topics examining interactions between personal welfare and the resources derived from one's household, the labor market, and from the government through the tax and benefit system. The book reflects the interests of, and is a memorial to, the late Aldi Hagenaars.

The first of January 1999 marked the beginning of a macroeconomic experi ment without precedent in modern history. For the first time eleven European countries agreed to abolish their local currencies in favour of a single one, the Euro. Not surprisingly, the necessary preparatory process has been accompa nied by an intensive discussion about the best way to manage the new Euro currency properly. To spur on that discourse was the principal motivation for this thesis. The introductory chapter attempts to bridge economic and econometric views on money demand analysis. It should help to motivate estimation proce dures and to standardize interpretation techniques, hopefully initiating further discussion in that direction. It intends to make the following chapters more accessible. In this thesis I approach the general subject in two principle ways. In chapter 3 I consider technical issues dealing with time series with shifts in the mean. Two years ago, Helmut Liitkepohl and Pentti Saikkonen asked me to join in on a related project which became the cornerstone of this chapter. I have very much appreciated the highly instructive collaboration with both these scholars."

This book, first edited with an introduction by F. A. v. Hayek in 1939, explores some of the popular errors which related to the suspension of the cash payments of the Bank of England, and to the influence of our paper currency on the price of provisions. The introduction provides an interesting overview of the life, thoughts, and achievements of Henry Thornton. An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain will be of interest to students of the history of economic thought.

The essays collected in this volume, written by well-known academics and policy analysts, discuss the impact of increased capital mobility on macroeconomic performance. The authors highlight the most adequate ways to manage the transition from a semi-closed economy to a semi-open one. Additionally, issues related to the measurement of openness, monetary control, optimal exchange rates regimes, sequencing of reforms, and real exchange rate dynamics under different degrees of capital mobility are carefully analyzed. The book is divided into four parts after the editor's introduction. The first part contains the general analytics of monetary policy in open economies. Parts two to four deal with diverse regional experiences, covering Europe, the Asian Pacific region, and Latin America. The papers on which the essays are based were originally presented at a conference on Monetary Policy in Semi-Open Economies, held in Seoul, Korea in November 1992.

Many economists view competition among central banks as leading to an over-issue of money. This book challenges the conventional wisdom by showing that competition among Federal Reserve banks in the 1920s did not result in an over-issue problem. The US Congress imposed a more monopolistic structure on the Fed in the mid-1930s so that it could accomodate an increase in the revenue needs of the Treasury. This book is unique in emphasizing the evolution of the Fed's structure from a highly competitive one to a highly monopolistic one.

This volume deals with the monetary history of Italy from its independence in 1861 to 1992. It provides the first complete analysis of a country which has experienced diverse and often dramatic monetary conditions. The authors interpret Italian monetary history through the looking glass of a model which, while monetarist in flavour, is open to other interpretations. A key theme is that public finance is at the root of the (relatively) high Italian inflation rates. The authors argue that there is a strong relationship between the government budget deficit and monetary policy, and that the monetary authorities are too dependent on government. The book contributes in a novel way not only to the monetary debate, but also to fiscal and institutional questions. It combines economic theory, statistical data and history in an accessible way which should prove useful to both economic historians and monetary economists.

Currency crises in Europe and Mexico during the 1990s provided stark reminders of the importance and the fragility of international financial markets. These experiences led some commentators to conclude that open international capital markets are incompatible with financial stability. But the pre-1914 gold standard is an obvious challenge to the notion that open capital markets are sources of instability. To deepen our understanding of how this system worked, this volume draws together recent research on the gold standard. Theoretical models are used to guide qualitative discussions of historical experience, while econometric methods are used to help the historical data speak clearly. The result is an overview of the gold standard, a survey of the relevant applied research in international macroeconomics, and a demonstration of how the past can help to inform the present.

Financial services with global reach are becoming ever more important in the conduct and organization of the trade and investment of nations, and currencies that lack international standing lose out in this business. The result of financial development has been destabilizing currency and portfolio substitution - in favour of international currencies and against local ones. This book analyses formal approaches to overcoming monetary divisions within countries and within integrating regions, focusing on the consequences of monetary union for trade among union members and their financial development and stability. The authors discuss hard pegs such as those attempted by the currency board of Argentina, outright dollarization, such as in Ecuador, and multilateral monetary union, as in Europe, the least reversible form of monetary union and the most powerful elixir of financial integration and trade. The political classes and central banks in most countries have been reluctant to admit the market- and technology-driven forces of currency consolidation, much less yield to them. International financial institutions too are still in the habit of proffering advice about national monetary and exchange-rate policies on the assumption that getting rid of both is not even an option. Emerging-market countries, in particular, have to choose between retaining what independent monetary means they still have - and can safely use in the presence of widespread liability dollarization and currency mismatches - and formally replacing the domestic with an international currency to reduce exposure to debilitating financial crises. In concrete investigations of this choice, this volume shows that monetary union deserves a much more sympathetic hearing.

Why has China been able to avoid the crippling hyperinflation that has bedeviled so many developing and reforming centrally planned economies? This is puzzling because the potential for inflation in the Chinese economy is enormous, the fiscal control by the central government is weak, and China's tax and monetary policies are still passive. This book analyzes an important aspect of this issue - how the central government has been able to tame inflationary investment demand and to impose investment reduction policies that go against the economic interests of Chinese local officials. Yasheng Huang focuses on the controlling role of political institutions and argues that one of the central functions of the political institutions is to make allocative decisions about bureaucratic personnel. Drawing on institutional economics, he hypothesizes that centralized personnel allocations help reconcile some of policy differences between the central and lcoal governments and provide vital information to the central government about the conduct of local officials. Systematic data analysis is carried out to test the propositions developed on the basis of this hypothesis. The book also contains detailed descriptions of the roles of local governments in economic and investment management and of China's bureaucratic system. Huang argues that China now has a de facto federalist system in which the central government specializes in political responsibilities and the local governments specialize in economic responsibilities. This, he suggests, has a number of important normative implications. Under the condition of political authoritarianism, this combination of economic and fiscal decentralizations withpolitical centralization may be an optimal governance structure. Economically, a degree of political centralization is useful to alleviate coordination problems when economic agents lack financial self-discipline and when indirect macroeconomic policies are ineffective. Premature political decentralization in the presence of soft-budget constraints may have contributed to runaway inflation in other reforming centrally planned economies. Politically, the Chinese style of federalism can also be optimal because fiscal decentralization helps check the enormous political discretion in the hands of the central government, on which the Chinese political system itself places no formal constraints. Given China's recent history, this ought to be an important consideration in designing China's economic system.

Volker Simmering shows how globalization influences the evolution of international standards and compares the roles of mandatory and voluntary standards. He investigates the problem of technological progress in networks and analyzes the resolution of conflicts within international standardization bodies. As a result, he suggests that policy intervention and the presence of adjacent institutional arrangements are likely to improve the performance of network markets, e.g. those for information technology and telecommunication.

As the complexity of financial markets keeps growing, so does the need to understand the decision-making and the coordination of the exsuing actions in the marketplace. In particular, the disclosure of information to market participants and its impact on the market outcome mertis attention. This study analyses the role of private and public information in currency crises. Calls for increased dissemination of economic and policy-related information by central banks notwithstanding, the study shows that transparency is not generally conductive to preventing speculative attacks in fixed exchange-rate regimes. Rather, the role of private and public information in the market-place depencs critically on the prevailing market sentiment. The study also highlights the import of market transparency design in an environment that allows for herding and market leadership of individual speculators.

In the 1990s, numerous Latin American nations privatized their public pension systems. These reforms dramatically transformed the way these countries provide retirement income, and they provoked widespread protests from workers and pensioners alike. Retiring the State represents the first book-length study of the origins of this surprising trend. Drawing on original field research, including interviews with key policymakers, Madrid argues that the recent reforms were driven not by social policy, but by macroeconomic concerns. Countries facing growing financial pressures chose to privatize their pension systems largely to boost their domestic savings rates and reduce public pension spending in the long run. The author explores his arguments through detailed case studies of pension reform in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, a survey of social security privatization efforts in East Europe and Latin America as a whole, and a quantitative analysis of pension privatization worldwide.

This book analyses the widely-held view of the merits of the 'bank-based' German system of finance for investment, and shows that this view is not supported by evidence from the post-war period. The institutional features of the German system are such that universal banks have control of voting rights at shareholders' meetings due to proxy votes, and they also have representation on companies' supervisory boards. These features are claimed to have two main benefits. One is that the German system reduces asymmetric information problems, enabling banks to supply more external finance to firms at a lower cost, and thus increasing investment. The other is that German banks are able to mould and control managements of firms on behalf of shareholders, and thus ensure that firms are run efficiently. This book assesses whether empirical evidence backs up these claims, and shows that the merits of the German system are largely myths.

This book examines all major facets of the Philippine economy and development policy. Contributors to this volume look both to the past and to the future, and their approaches are variously descriptive, analytical, interpretive , and comparative. The book assesses trends since the 1980s, identifies major policy issues, and provides a balance sheet of achievements and deficiencies over the past decade and beyond. It highlights future challenges that need to be addressed if the country is to embark on a sustainable, durable, and equitable growth trajectory. The book also offers lessons from the country's development experience which may be relevant for many countries at the present time. The volume has particular relevance for the country's policymakers, academics and the business community, and will also appeal to a broader international audience.

Financial intermediation is currently a subject of active research on both sides of the Atlantic. The integration of European financial markets, in particular, highlights several important issues. In this volume, derived from a joint CEPR conference with the Fundacion Banco Bilbao Vizcaya (BBV), leading academics from Europe and North America review 'state-of-the-art' theories of banking and financial intermediation and discuss their policy implications. The principal focus is on the risks of increased competition, the appropriate regulation of banks, and the differences between Anglo-American and Continental European forms of financial markets. Relationship banking, stock markets and banks, banking and corporate control, financial intermediation in Eastern Europe, monetary policy and the banking system, and financial intermediation and growth are also discussed.