Today, most scholars agree that mismanaged monetary policy contributed to the length and severity of the Great Depression. There is little agreement, however, about the causes of the Federal Reserve's mistakes. Some argue that leadership and other organizational changes prior to the depression caused a distinct change in policy strategy that lessened the Fed's responsiveness to economic conditions, while others contend that there was no change in the Fed's behavior, and that errors during the depression are traceable to previous policies. This book examines the policy strategy developed by the Federal Reserve during the 1920s and considers whether its continued use could explain the Fed's failure to respond vigorously to the depression. It also studies the effects on policy of the institutional changes occurring prior to the depression. While these changes enhanced the authority of officials who opposed open-market purchases and also caused some upward bias in discount rates, Wheelock concludes that monetary policy during the depression was in fact largely a continuation of the previous policy. The apparent contrast in Fed responsiveness to economic conditions between the 1920s and early 1930s resulted from the consistent use of a procyclical policy strategy that caused the Fed to respond more vigorously to minor recessions than to severe depressions.

This book provides a critical evaluation of the literature on finance, investment and innovation and proposes new research methods for evaluating the comparative performance of financial systems in supporting innovation. The comparative advantage of this book is that of being directly focused on one of the main unsolved issues in monetary and financial economics: the relative effectiveness of national financial systems in supporting innovation. It proposes various theoretical and empirical contributions that, taken together, allow to evaluate the relative effectiveness of some of the most important country systems such as Japan, and the UK and Italy.

Following the recent publication of the award winning and much acclaimed "The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics," second edition which brings together Nobel Prize winners and the brightest young scholars to survey the discipline, we are pleased to announce "The New Palgrave Economics Collection." Due to demand from the economics community these books address key subject areas within the field. Each title is comprised of specially selected articles from the Dictionary and covers a fundamental theme within the discipline. All of the articles have been specifically chosen by the editors of the Dictionary, Steven N.Durlauf and Lawrence E.Blume and are written by leading practitioners in the field. The Collections provide the reader with easy to access information on complex and important subject areas, and allow individual scholars and students to have their own personal reference copy.

Mandelbrot and van Ness (1968) suggested fractional Brownian motion as a parsimonious model for the dynamics of ?nancial price data, which allows for dependence between returns over time. Starting with Rogers(1997) there is an ongoing dispute on the proper usage of fractional Brownian motion in option pricing theory. Problems arise because fractional Brownian motion is not a semimartingale and therefore "no arbitrage pricing" cannot be applied. While this is consensus, the consequences are not as clear. The orthodox interpretation is simply that fractional Brownian motion is an inadequate candidate for a price process. However, as shown by Cheridito (2003) any theoretical arbitrage opportunities disappear by assuming that market p- ticipants cannot react instantaneously. This is the point of departure of Rostek's dissertation. He contributes to this research in several respects: (i) He delivers a thorough introduction to fr- tional integration calculus and uses the binomial approximation of fractional Brownianmotion to give the reader a ?rst idea of this special market setting.

The Development of International Monetary Policy traces the development of international monetary policy from mercantilism to quantitative easing. It has been structured to present some of the pressing issues in international monetary relations involving currency valuation, inflation, exchange rates, and regional monetary policy. Additionally, it presents international monetary law as a basis for understanding the concept of monetary sovereignty and the limits of state autonomy in an interdependent world of legal arrangements. The book revisits some controversial arguments about stagflation and expansionary monetary policy, and it uses current time series data and empirical evidence to show why theories about the trade-off between inflation and unemployment are not extinct. Part of the concluding argument indicates that it is imperative for the international community to have a structure for monetary dispute resolutions involving autonomous states. Notably, the author further concludes that fiat money will continue to be a dominant unit of account, more so than crypto-currencies, into the distant future. An accessible and practical read, this is book is a valuable resource for postgraduates, academics and researchers of international trade, finance and economics.

Despite his achievements, David Ricardo's views on money have often been misunderstood and underappreciated. His advanced ideas had to wait until the twentieth century to be applied, and most historians of economic thought continue to consider him as an obsolete orthodox. The last book devoted in tribute to Ricardo as a monetary economist was published more than 25 years ago. Ricardo on Money encompasses the whole of Ricardo's writings on currency, whether in print, unpublished notes, correspondence, or reported parliamentary speeches and evidence. The aim of the book is at rehabilitating Ricardo as an unorthodox theorist on money and suggesting his relevance for modern analysis. It is divided into three parts: history, theory and policy. The first describes the factual and intellectual context of Ricardo's monetary writings. The second part puts the concept of standard centre stage and clarifies how, according to Ricardo, the standard regulated the quantity - and hence the value - of money. The final part shows that Ricardo relied on the active management of paper money rather than on flows of bullion and commodities to produce international adjustment and guarantee the security of the monetary system. Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the publication of On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, this book will be of great interest to all historians of economic thought and scholars of monetary economics.

After decades of economic integration and EU enlargement, the economic geography of Europe has shifted, with new peripheries emerging and the core showing signs of fragmentation. This book examines the paths of the core and peripheral countries, with a focus on their diverse productive capabilities and their interdependence. Crisis in the European Monetary Union: A Core-Periphery Perspective provides a new framework for analysing the economic crisis that has shaken the Eurozone countries. Its analysis goes beyond the short-term, to study the medium and long-term relations between 'core' countries (particularly Germany) and Southern European 'peripheral' countries. The authors argue that long-term sustainability means assigning the state a key role in guiding investment, which in turn implies industrial policies geared towards diversifying, innovating and strengthening the economic structures of peripheral countries to help them thrive. Offering a fresh angle on the European crisis, this volume will appeal to students, academics and policymakers interested in the past, present and future construction of Europe.

Consumer credit borrowing - using credit cards, store cards and personal loans - is an important and routine part of many of our lives. But what happens when these everyday forms of borrowing go 'bad', when people start to default on their loans and when they cannot, or will not, repay? It is this poorly understood, controversial, but central part of both the consumer credit industry and the lived experiences of an increasing number of people that this book explores. Drawing on research from the interior of the debt collections industry, as well as debtors' own accounts and historical research into technologies of lending and collection, it examines precisely how this ever more sophisticated, globally connected market functions. It focuses on the highly intimate techniques used to try and recoup defaulting debts from borrowers, as well as on the collection industry's relationship with lenders. Joe Deville follows a journey of default, from debtors' borrowing practices, to the intrusion of collections technologies into their homes and everyday lives, to the collections organisation, to attempts by debtors to seek outside help. In the process he shows how to understand this particular market, we need to understand the central role played within it by emotion and affect. By opening up for scrutiny an area of the economy which is often hidden from view, this book makes a major contribution both to understanding the relationship between emotion and calculation in markets and the role of consumer credit in our societies and economies. This book will be of interest to students, teachers and researchers in a range of fields, including sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, economics and social psychology.

This book presents a new narrative on the eurozone crisis. It argues that the common currency has the potential to kill the European Union, and the conventional wisdom that the eurozone can be fixed by a common budget and further political integration is incorrect. The authors address key questions such as why the European Union and the single market have been successful, why the common currency poses a threat to European integration, and whether it is possible to either fix the eurozone or dissolve it while keeping the EU and the single market. Contrary to the view that it would be best if the Southern European countries left the eurozone first, the book makes the case that the optimal solution would be to start the process with the most competitive countries exiting first. The authors argue that a return to national currencies would be beneficial not only to the crisis-ridden southern countries, but also to France and Germany, which were the main promoters of the single currency. An organised unwinding of the euro area would be beneficial both for the European economy and for Europe's main trading partners. The authors contend that to defend the euro at all costs weakens the European economy and threatens the cohesion of the European Union. If pro-European and pro-market EU leaders do not dismantle the eurozone, it will most likely be done by their anti-European and anti-market successors. If that happens, the European Union and the common market will be destroyed. This book will be a useful and engaging contribution to the existing literature in the fields of macro, monetary and international finance and economics.

In der ersten Halfte des vorletzten Jahrhunderts war neben vielen anderen vor allem der deutsch-argentinische OEkonom Silvio Jean Gesell (1862-1930) bemuht, einen "dritten Weg" abseits der Standardoekonomie zu finden. Er entwickelte die Theorie der Freiwirtschaft, die er in seinem Hauptwerk Die Naturliche Wirtschaftsordnung durch Freiland und Freigeld (1916) veroeffentlichte. Gesells besonderer Beitrag zur Theorie des Geldes und des Zinses ist, dass er deutlich unterscheidet zwischen dem Zins und der Grenzleistungsfahigkeit des Kapitals. Ferner beschreibt er, dass der Besitz an Geld nur unbedeutende Durchhaltekosten verursacht, wohingegen Vorrate von Waren mit weit hoeheren Durchhaltekosten belastet sind. Die Anhanger Gesells haben schon fruh auf Parallelen zu Keynes Liquiditatstheorie hingewiesen und darauf, dass in der The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) neben der "klassischen" Idee, dass der Zinssatz primar durch die Zentralbank bestimmt ist, eine Zinstheorie entworfen wird, in der durch die "Entscheidung zu horten" der Zinssatz zum Preis fur eine aufgegebene Liquiditat wird. Daruberhinaus ist Keynes' positive Wurdigung der Person Gesells und seiner Reformvorschlage so gut wie unbekannt.

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.

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.

In the past thirty years the financial sector has seen unparalleled growth and has exerted increased economic and political influence and significance. This growth has come hand-in-hand with several serious economic crises and greater monetary instability. Set against this background, this important book offers a wide ranging, critical analysis of the financial sector. Each of the chapters explores a different theme under the general topic of money, finance and capitalist development. The performance of capitalist economies is first analysed from a Keynesian evolutionary perspective before moving to a focus on the East Asian crisis and asking the question of whether the global neo-liberal regime can survive in Asia. The rapid growth of the financial sector has involved, amongst other changes, a dramatic growth in the sale of financial derivatives. This activity is examined and found to increase uncertainty rather than decrease risk. The nature of money, and in particular the nature of endogenous credit money, is thoroughly discussed, and the political economy of central banks and their operations is reviewed. The book concludes with a critical assessment of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment. Money, Finance and Capitalist Development will be of great value and interest to financial and monetary economists, as well as students and scholars of macroeconomics and finance.

This book focuses on the core issues in money and banking. By using simple applications for anyone that understands basic economics, the lessons in the book provide any student or reader with a background in how financial markets work, how banks as businesses function, how central banks make decisions, and how monetary policy affects the global economy.

Money and Banking is split into sections based on subject matter, specifically definitions and introductions, financial markets, microeconomic issues, macroeconomy policy, and international finance. It also covers:

- derivative and currency markets

- the microeconomics of banking

- trade and currency movements

- asymmetric information and derivative markets

- the future of financial markets and their participants

By providing a mix of microeconomic and macroeconomic applications, focusing on both international examples and open economy macroeconomics, this book reduces the minutiae seen in competing books. Each chapter provides summaries of what should be learned along the way and why the chapter s topic is important, regardless of current events. For undergraduate business, economics or social science students otherwise, this book is a concise source of information on money, banking and financial markets.

A major theme of this book is the development of a consistent unified model framework for the evaluation of bond options. In general options on zero bonds (e.g. caps) and options on coupon bearing bonds (e.g. swaptions) are linked by no-arbitrage relations through the correlation structure of interest rates. Therefore, unspanned stochastic volatility (USV) as well as Random Field (RF) models are used to model the dynamics of entire yield curves. The USV models postulate a correlation between the bond price dynamics and the subordinated stochastic volatility process, whereas Random Field models allow for a deterministic correlation structure between bond prices of different terms. Then the pricing of bond options is done either by running a Fractional Fourier Transform or by applying the Integrated Edgeworth Expansion approach. The latter is a new extension of a generalized series expansion of the (log) characteristic function, especially adapted for the computation of exercise probabilities.

Bert Van Roosebeke analyses non-contractual state liability in the European Union. He explains differences in member states' breaching behaviour and presents the state liability doctrine as developed by the European Court of Justice in a number of cases. He shows that compliance is the true economic aim of state liability legislation and presents a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of both private and public law enforcement mechanisms. He finally formulates improvements to the rules of state liability.

Robert E. Wright portrays the development of a modern financial sector--including a central bank, a national monetary system, a network of financial intermediaries, and efficient capital markets--as the driving force behind America's economic transition from agricultural colony to industrial juggernaut. He applies the economic theory of information asymmetry to understandings of early U.S. financial development, expanding on recent scholarship of finance-led economic growth. The book builds upon many of Adam Smith's lesser-known insights into financial relationships.

Defense of the franc Poincaré dominated French economic policy during the Depression. While most countries took their currencies off gold to permit a wider range of domestic policies to foster recovery, in France policy makers resolved to preserve the gold parity of the franc by balancing the budget and lowering domestic prices. Novelty and experimentation were rejected in the conviction that a durable recovery was possible only through a return to strict neoclassical orthodoxy. Managing the franc Poincaré examines French monetary management from 1928 to 1936 in order to explain this stubborn determination to achieve recovery through deflation despite evidence of its failures abroad. Through evaluation of French understanding of the Depression, French economic diplomacy in an era of economic nationalism, the evolving roles of the French treasury and the Bank of France in monetary management and policy determination, and attention to the fractious politics of the Third Republic, French monetary policy is set within its ideological, institutional and political contexts.

This study links two fundamental political structures of the Cold War era, the transatlantic security system and the international monetary system. Central to this issue is a problem that soured relations among the Federal Republic and its major allies from the 1950s to the 1970s: Who was to bear the enormous cost of British and American troops in Germany? Both Washington and London identified this cost as a major reason for the decline of the pound and the dollar, whereas Germany reluctantly paid and traded "Money for Security", a fundamental pattern of its postwar foreign policy.

The Global Economy: A Concise History traces the history of the global economy over the past thousand years. In doing so, it explores all the main waves of globalization, from the trade revolution of the Middle Ages, to the Great and Little Divergence between the West and the East, as well as the North and the South of the world. This book examines the Industrial Revolution and the World Wars, and their respective consequences, as well as the interaction between technological shifts and the transition in geopolitical equilibria. The last chapters are dedicated to an in-depth examination of the transformation which occurred in the global economy after 1989. The chronological structure of the book is designed to help students memorize and understand key events. This book also discusses broader themes, such as convergence-divergence, growth and decline, development, and industrial revolutions. This will make it of interest not only to students and academics, but to all readers wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the history and current state of the global economy.

In this narrative history, David E. Lindsey gives the reader a ringside seat to a century of policies at the US Federal Reserve. Alternating between broad historical strokes and deep dives into the significance of monetary issues and developments, Lindsey offers a fascinating look into monetary policymaking from the Fed's inception in 1913 to today. Lindsey's three decades of service on the Federal Reserve Board staff allow him to combine the heft of scholarship with an insider's perspective on how the recent chairmen's and current chairwoman's personalities and singular visions have shaped policy choices with far-reaching consequences. He critiques the performances of Chairman Ben Bernanke and Vice Chair Janet Yellen during the prelude, outbreak, and aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, situating them in the context of the Fed's century-long history. He also quantitatively explores an alternative to the conventional New-Keynesian theory of inflation, replacing so-called "rational expectations" with the Fed's inflation objective. This unique volume is a piece of living history that has much to offer economists and monetary policy and finance professionals.

How and for whose benefit the European Central Bank (ECB) will work is one of the most important issues facing Europe, and has been the subject of vast media and academic interest. Much of this discussion has been of an increasingly emotional and political nature and has served to blur rather than inform. Written by a team at the ECB, including Otmar Issing, its Chief Economist, this study provides the first comprehensive, inside, non-technical analysis of the monetary policy strategy, institutional features and operational procedures of the Eurosystem.

This book answers some challenging questions in monetary growth theory within a compact theoretical framework. The author succeeds in integrating the theory of money, the theory of value and the theory of growth. The book re-examines many important ideas in modern monetary economics within a single analytical framework. It is concerned not only with traditional one-sector growth models of a homogeneous population with endogenous capital and knowledge, but also with multi-sector models, economies with heterogeneous households, and economies with urban structures, interregional interactions and international trade.
Zhang's book will appeal to those studying monetary economics, neoclassical growth theory, development economics and international economics. It is also useful more generally, for researchers in social sciences with an interest in the role of money in modern societies.

This account of monetary regimes since 1900 shows how the role of policy has changed, and how this has related to experience of inflation and the real economy, as well as to changes in political philosophies. The narrative concentrates on developments in America, Europe and Japan from the era of the classical gold standard, via the era of policy intervention and reduced faith in the market to the present "neo-liberal" regimes. It is argued that no school of macroeconomics is right for all time; different theoretical models may be appropriate.

Foreword Qing-Yun Jiang was born in Fujian, China. He studied International Business Administration at the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade in Shanghai, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Economics. In 1997, he started studying at the University of Hamburg. After his Master study and his successful completion of the necessary law examinations, he was admitted as a doctoral student in the law faculty in 2001. In addition to his study of German civil, criminal and administrative laws, Jiang demonstrated an increasing interest in law and economics, especially in the relationship between law and economic development. It is now a well-established fact that the rule of law, the protection of property rights and a swift and timely resolution to conflicts are corner stones of economic development and long-term economic growth. In many developing countries court delays are a major shortcoming of the legal system. This is true for countries in Latin America and in many Asian countries. Empirical findings show a 15 year length of civil procedure from the first filing of the case to the Supreme Court decision. This leads to court crises in the sense that private disputes are not brought to the court. Private parties attempt to circumvent the official legal system all together. When making contracts they resort to self enforcing contracts, to self help and, if available, to private alternative dispute settlement. In his thesis, Jiang presents an empirical study of court delays in China.