This book describes how the rapid advancement in encryption and network computing gave birth to new tools and products that have influenced the local and global economy alike. One recent and notable example is the emergence of virtual currencies (such as Bitcoin) also known as cryptocurrencies. Virtual currencies introduced a fundamental transformation that affected the way goods, services and assets are exchanged. As a result of its distributed ledgers based on blockchain, cryptocurrencies not only offer some unique advantages to the economy, investors, and consumers, but also pose considerable risks to users and challenges for regulators when fitting the new technology into the old legal framework. The core of this proposed book is to present and discuss the evidence on financial asset capabilities of virtual currencies. The contributors of this volume analyze several interesting and timely issues such as the particularities of virtual currencies and their statistical characteristics; the diversification benefits of virtual currencies; the behavior and dependence structure between virtual currencies and the financial markets; the economic implications of virtual currencies, their effects, their price risk, and contagion spillovers in a unified and comprehensive framework; the future of virtual currencies and their distributed ledgers technology.

This edited volume explores theoretical and empirical issues related to monetary economics and policy in the Islamic financial system. Derived from the Conference on Islamic Monetary Economics and Institutions: Theory and Practice 2017 held in Male, Maldives, the enclosed papers highlights several option for authorities and regulatory bodies regarding monetary policy and regulation, as well as discussing how Islamic monetary policy effects growth, financial stability and resilience to shocks in practice. The inter-linkage between Islamic monetary policy and other markets are also explored. The subject of Islamic economics has gained considerable attention in the last four decades with the emergence of Islamic financial institutions around the world. This phenomenon has motivated economists to develop a comprehensive theoretical framework of modern monetary economics for Islamic economic system. An important characteristic of the Islamic economic system is the abolition of interest from the financial system. Islamic monetary economics is distinguished from conventional monetary economics due to the absence of interest. Therefore, under the Islamic economic system, monetary policy has to depend on other tools. In the early theoretical literature on Islamic monetary economics, many have discussed the role of money in Islamic economics system, while the number of empirical studies on Islamic monetary economics is a relatively new phenomenon. According to Islamic scholars, there are three main goals of Islamic monetary policy: a) economic well-being with full employment and optimum rate of economic growth; b) socioeconomic justice and equitable distribution of income and wealth and c) stability in the value of money. Hence, the Islamic monetary policy has several socioeconomic and ethical implications. Featuring regional case studies, this book serves as a valuable resource for academics, scholars, practitioners and policy makers in the areas of Islamic economics and finance.

Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical - and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.

Essential reading for understanding the international economy-now thoroughly updated Lucid, accessible, and provocative, and now thoroughly updated to cover recent events that have shaken the global economy, Globalizing Capital is an indispensable account of the past 150 years of international monetary and financial history-from the classical gold standard to today's post-Bretton Woods "nonsystem." Bringing the story up to the present, this third edition covers the global financial crisis, the Greek bailout, the Euro crisis, the rise of China as a global monetary power, the renewed controversy over the international role of the U.S. dollar, and the currency war. Concise and nontechnical, and with a proven appeal to general readers, students, and specialists alike, Globalizing Capital is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand where the international economy has been-and where it may be going.

Currency Competition and Foreign Exchange Markets by Philipp Hartmann of the European Central Bank is a major theoretical and empirical study of international currencies, which focuses on the role which the Euro will play in the international monetary and financial system along with the US dollar and the Japanese yen. In contrast to much of the existing literature which approaches the subject from a macroeconomic perspective, Philipp Hartmann develops a theoretical model which uses game theory, time series and panel econometrics, and links financial markets analysis with transaction cost economics. The results of Currency Competition and Foreign Exchange Markets are presented with reference to political, historical and institutional considerations, and provide accessible answers to policy-makers, business people and scholars worldwide. The sections on Spread Estimation and Multiple Vehicles with Inter-Dealer Price and Entry Competition will be of particular use for finance professionals.

How do economists reconcile their expertise with their failures to predict and manage the 2008 financial crisis? This book goes a long way toward an answer by using systems theory to reveal the complex interdependence of factors and forces behind the crisis. In her fully integrated view of the economy, how it works, and how the economic crisis burst, Karen Higgins combines human psychology, cultural values, and belief formation with descriptions of the ways banks and markets succeed and fail. In each chapter she introduces themes from financial crisis literature and brings a systems-theory treatment of them. Her methodology and visual presentations both develop the tools of systems theory and apply these tools to the financial crisis. Not just another volume about the crisis, this book challenges the status quo through its unique multidisciplinary approach.
Presents a broad global view of international economic health and international corporate healthDescribes how policies, regulations, and trends dating to the 1950s influenced the crisisAssumes readers possess a general familiarity of economics and finance

This book critically analyses the crisis of the euro currency from 2008 to the present. It argues that an understanding of this crisis requires an understanding of financial and economic crises in individual countries participating in the euro. It goes on to describe and explain the crises in four countries - Greece, Ireland, Spain and Italy - showing how they differ and together challenge the euro currency by requiring a varied policy response from Europe. Eurocritical is a guide for scholars, students and practitioners of finance and economics.

Public banks are banks located within the public sphere of a state. They are pervasive, with more than 900 institutions worldwide, and powerful, with tens of trillions in assets. Public banks are neither essentially good nor bad. Rather, they are dynamic institutions, made and remade by contentious social forces. As the first single-authored book on public banks, this timely intervention examines how these institutions can confront the crisis of climate finance and catalyse a green and just transition. The author explores six case studies across the globe, demonstrating that public banks have acquired the representative structures, financial capacity, institutional knowledge, collaborative networks, and geographical reach to tackle decarbonisation, definancialisation, and democratisation. These institutions are not without contradictions, torn as they are between contending public and private interests in class-divided society. Ultimately, social forces and struggles shape how and if public banks serve the public good.

George Selgin is one of the world's foremost monetary historians. In this book, based on the 2016 Hayek Memorial Lecture, he shows how a system of private banks without a central bank can bring about financial stability through self-regulation. If one bank stretches credit too far, it will be reined in by the others before the system as a whole gets out of control. The banks have a strong incentive to ensure an orderly resolution if a particular bank is facing insolvency or illiquidity. Selgin draws on evidence from the era of 'free banking' in Scotland and Canada. These arrangements enjoyed greater financial stability, with fewer banking crises, than the English system with its central bank and the US model with its faulty government regulation. The creation of the Federal Reserve appears to have increased the frequency of financial crises. The book also includes commentaries by Kevin Dowd and Mathieu Bedard. Dowd asks whether free-banking systems should be underpinned by a gold standard,which he regards as a tried-and-tested institution at the heart of their success. Bedard challenges the assumption that the banking sector is inherently unstable and therefore requires state intervention. He argues that increases in government control have made the banking system more prone to crisis.

The international monetary system imploded during the Great Depression. As the conventional narrative goes, the collapse of the gold standard and the rise of competitive devaluation sparked a monetary war that sundered the system, darkened the decade, and still serves as a warning to policymakers today. But this familiar tale is only half the story. With the Tripartite Agreement of 1936, Britain, America, and France united to end their monetary war and make peace. This agreement articulated a new vision, one in which the democracies promised to consult on exchange rate policy and uphold a liberal international system - at the very time fascist forces sought to destroy it. Max Harris explores this little-known but path-breaking and successful effort to revolutionize monetary relations, tracing the evolution of the monetary system in the twilight years before the Second World War and demonstrating that this history is not one solely of despair.

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In this book Garbade, a former analyst at a primary dealer and researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, traces the evolution of open market operations, Treasury debt management, and the microstructure of the US government securities markets following the 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve. This volume examines how these operations evolved, responding both to external forces and to one another. Utilising a vast scope of primary material, the work provides insight into how officials fashioned the instruments, facilities, and procedures needed to advance their policy objectives in light of their novel freedoms and responsibilities. Students and scholars of macroeconomics, financial regulation, and the history of central banking and the Federal Reserve will find this volume a welcome addition to Garbade's earlier studies of Treasury debt operations during World War I, the 1920s, and the Great Depression and since 1983.

This book is a timely exploration of an unprecedented, cataclysmic pandemic episode. It examines certain critical aspects of socio-scientific theory across a variety of diverse themes, and through an epistemic lens. The book investigates the general theory of pandemic episodes and their adverse long-term effects on human and environmental wellbeing. It includes an in-depth study of COVID-19 but also looks to the future to contemplate potential pandemics to come. The existing approach to the study of pandemics is critically examined in terms of the prevalent isolated and thus mutated way of viewing human and mechanical relations in the name of specialization and modernity. The book presents a novel model of science-economy-society moral inclusiveness that forms a distinctive theoretical approach to the issue of normalizing all forms of pandemic challenges. It is methodologically different from existing economic theory, including the critical study of microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics. Human and environmental existence along with its multidisciplinary outlook of unity of knowledge between modernity, traditionalism, and socio-cultural values is emphasized in the treatment and cure of pandemic episodes. The book is a unique reference work, offering fresh wisdom within the moral methodological worldview.

In their fight against the debt crisis, the European Union and its member states took measures that have profoundly changed the euro. It now differs fundamentally from when it was introduced by the Treaty of Maastricht. Surprisingly, this change has come about with hardly any formal amendment to the Union's 'basic constitutional charter', the Treaties. How, then, to understand it? This book argues that the constitution of the EU has transformed, which occurs when constitutions change without amendment. The transformation is characterized by a broadening of the currency union's stability conception from price stability to also financial stability. Using solidarity as a lens, the book conceptualises the unity of the member states and analyses how this was preserved during the crisis. Subsequently, it explains how that changed the currency union's set-up and why the European Court of Justice could not turn against the change in Pringle and Gauweiler.

How silver influenced two hundred years of world history, and why it matters today This is the story of silver's transformation from soft money during the nineteenth century to hard asset today, and how manipulations of the white metal by American president Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s and by the richest man in the world, Texas oil baron Nelson Bunker Hunt, during the 1970s altered the course of American and world history. Silver has been the preferred shelter against government defaults, political instability, and inflation for most people in the world because it is cheaper than gold. The white metal has been the place to hide when conventional investments sour, but it has also seduced sophisticated investors throughout the ages like a siren. This book explains how powerful figures, up to and including Warren Buffett, have come under silver's thrall, and how its history guides economic and political decisions in the twenty-first century.

Augusto Graziani challenges traditional theories of monetary production, arguing that a modern economy based on credit cannot be understood without a focus on the administration of credit flow. Money functions as an instrument for the circulation of commodities or for keeping a stock of liquid wealth in mainstream economic theory. In neither case is it considered fundamental to the production of goods or the distribution of income. A strong exponent of the circulation theory of monetary production, Graziani presents an original and perhaps controversial argument which will stimulate debate.

THE DEFINITIVE BOOK ON HOW THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND BITCOIN AND CRYPTOCURRENCY IS CHANGING THE WORLD -- MAJORLY EXPANDED WITH NEW MATERIAL ON CRYPTOASSETS, ICOs, SMART CONTRACTS, DIGITAL IDENTITY AND MORE.

'This book has had an enormous impact on the evolution of blockchain in the world' Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corporation

'What a spectacular book. Mind-blowing in its expansiveness and profundity. It makes me think we're at one of those times in technological, economic and social history where the sky is the limit' Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer and Chief Scientist at Prima Data

'The Tapscotts have written the book, literally, on how to survive and thrive in this next wave of technology-driven disruption. Likely to become one of the iconic books of our time' Clay Christensen, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and author of The Innovator's Dilemma

'Occasionally a book comes along that changes the global discourse. This is likely to be one of those books. Blockchains are at the heart of the fourth industrial revolution and the Tapscotts lucidity explain why and how to capture the opportunity and avoid dangers' Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum

'Blockchain Revolution is a highly readable introduction to a bamboozling but increasingly important field' - Guardian

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Blockchain is the ingeniously simple technology that powers Bitcoin. But it is much more than that, too. It is a public ledger to which everyone has access, but which no single person controls. It allows for companies and individuals to collaborate with an unprecedented degree of trust and transparency. It is cryptographically secure, but fundamentally open. And soon it will be everywhere.

In Blockchain Revolution, Don and Alex Tapscott reveal how this game-changing technology will shape the future of the world economy, dramatically improving everything from healthcare records to online voting, and from insurance claims to artist royalty payments. Brilliantly researched and highly accessible, this is the essential text on the next major paradigm shift. Read it, or be left behind.

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Don Tapscott is one of the most influential living theorists on business and society. He is the bestselling author of Wikinomics, The Digital Economy, and a dozen other acclaimed books about tech­nology, business, and society.

Alex Tapscott is the CEO of NextBlock Global a digital asset company. Previously, he worked for seven years in investment banking in New York and Toronto.

This timely book uses cutting-edge research to analyze the fundamental causes of economic and financial crises, and illustrates the macroeconomic foundations required for future economic policymaking in order to avoid these crises.The expert contributors take a critical approach to monetary analysis, providing elements for a new paradigm of economic policymaking at both national and international levels. Major issues are explored, including: inflation, capital accumulation and involuntary unemployment, sovereign debts and interest payment, and the euro-area crisis. Opening new lines of research in the economic and financial crises, this book will prove a fascinating read for academics, students and researchers in the field of monetary economics. Monetary policymakers, central bank officials and international financial organisations will also find the book to be an invaluable resource. Contributors include: J.-L. Bailly, X. Bradley, A. Cencini, M. Citraro, C. Gnos, P. Piegay, S. Rossi, B. Schmitt

Holger Markmann studies covered bonds and their market behaviour upon the announcement and implementation of outright covered bond purchases by the eurosystem. After introducing the covered bond market, its reaction to the global financial crisis, and the functionality of unconventional monetary policy to a broad audience, the author analyzes the impact of these purchases. The first Covered Bond Purchase Programme (CBPP1) has lowered covered bond spreads by 3-4 basis points in the short-term, 10 basis points in the medium-term, and increased emission volumes by EURO 103 billion. CBPP2 and CBPP3 have not led to similar effects. However, the programs' effectiveness relies on the market's expectations and its prevalent health. About the Author Holger Markmann is PostDoc at the Real Estate Management Institute (REMI) of EBS Universitat fur Wirtschaft und Recht and Managing Director of a real estate investment firm. His research focuses on real estate capital market financing, bank funding, and unconventional monetary policy. Prior to his current roles, he worked for a bulge bracket investment bank, advising financial institutions on their M&A- and capital market activities.

This volume is a contribution to the debates surrounding international monetary reform. The author examines and analyses the workings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and suggests how the international monetary system could, through changes to the IMF, be reshaped and reformed. Chapters examine the Palais-Royal report, explain how the IMF could be granted unlimited bailout powers to confront a global crisis, propose an exchange-rate based mechanism by which the international community could discipline excessive imbalances, examine alternative possibilities for the supply of future reserves, advocate `enthronement of the Special Drawing Right', and discuss the obstacles in the way of such an ambitious reform agenda.

This successful text, now in its second edition, offers the most comprehensive overview of monetary economics and monetary policy currently available. It covers the microeconomic, macroeconomic and monetary policy components of the field. Major features of the new edition include: Stylised facts on money demand and supply, and the relationships between monetary policy, inflation, output and unemployment in the economy. Theories on money demand and supply, including precautionary and buffer stock models, and monetary aggregation. Cross-country comparison of central banking and monetary policy in the US, UK and Canada, as well as consideration of the special features of developing countries. Monetary growth theory and the distinct roles of money and financial institutions in economic growth in promoting endogenous growth. This book will be of interest to teachers and students of monetary economics, money and banking, macroeconomics and monetary policy.

Many of the world's major economies boast dominant international currencies. Not so for China. Its renminbi has lagged far behind the pound, the euro, and the dollar in global circulation-and for good reason. China has long privileged economic policies that have fueled development at the expense of the renminbi's growth, and it has become clear that the underpowered currency is threatening China's future. The nation's leaders now face the daunting task of strengthening the currency without losing control of the nation's economy or risking total collapse. How are they approaching this challenge? In The People's Money, Paola Subacchi introduces readers to China's monetary system, mapping its evolution over the past century and, particularly, its transformation since Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978. Subacchi revisits the policies that fostered the country's economic rise while at the same time purposefully creating a currency of little use beyond China's borders. She shows the key to understanding China's economic predicament lies in past and future strategies for the renminbi. The financial turbulence following the global crisis of 2008, coupled with China's ambitions as a global creditor and chief economic power, has forced the nation to reckon with the limited international circulation of the renminbi. Increasing the currency's reach will play a major role in securing China's future.

The extensive monetary policy of central banks during the Great Recession has re-newed the interest in the relation between (possibly) non-neutral money and wealth and income inequality. In this work, a dynamic general equilibrium model approach is used to study the effects of an inflation rate change on inequality. These effects are found to be temporary and to work through two channels: First, at the consumer level, intertemporal substitution effects differ even under an identical policy rule of all agents due to individual skill and capital endowments. This implies a transitory effect of inflation rate changes on inequality. Second, an indirect effect results from different capital intensities in industrial branches and capital-labour substitution effects. This may be endorsed by varying individual skill levels. The theoretical model's implications are tested empirically in a time series analysis on US data.

A dollar is a dollar--or so most of us believe. Indeed, it is part of the ideology of our time that money is a single, impersonal instrument that impoverishes social life by reducing relations to cold, hard cash. After all, it's just money. Or is it? Distinguished social scientist and prize-winning author Viviana Zelizer argues against this conventional wisdom. She shows how people have invented their own forms of currency, earmarking money in ways that baffle market theorists, incorporating funds into webs of friendship and family relations, and otherwise varying the process by which spending and saving takes place. Zelizer concentrates on domestic transactions, bestowals of gifts and charitable donations in order to show how individuals, families, governments, and businesses have all prescribed social meaning to money in ways previously unimagined.