In this important new book, Giandomenico Majone examines the crucial but often overlooked distinction between the general aim of European integration and the specific method of integration employed in designing an (ill-considered) monetary union. Written with the author's customary insight and precision, this highly topical and provocative book reviews the Union's leaders' tradition of pushing through ambitious projects without considering the serious hurdles that lie in the way of their success. Regional and European integration topics are discussed, including credibility of commitments, delegation of powers, bargaining and influence activities, adverse selection and moral hazard. The author also offers a deeper examination of the specific crisis of monetary integration, arguing that it might be more effectively achieved with inter-jurisdictional competition and suggesting how integration should be managed in the globalized world.

Portfolio Decision Analysis: Improved Methods for Resource Allocation provides an extensive, up-to-date coverage of decision analytic methods which help firms and public organizations allocate resources to 'lumpy' investment opportunities while explicitly recognizing relevant financial and non-financial evaluation criteria and the presence of alternative investment opportunities. In particular, it discusses the evolution of these methods, presents new methodological advances and illustrates their use across several application domains. The book offers a many-faceted treatment of portfolio decision analysis (PDA). Among other things, it (i) synthesizes the state-of-play in PDA, (ii) describes novel methodologies, (iii) fosters the deployment of these methodologies, and (iv) contributes to the strengthening of research on PDA. Portfolio problems are widely regarded as the single most important application context of decision analysis, and, with its extensive and unique coverage of these problems, this book is a much-needed addition to the literature. The book also presents innovative treatments of new methodological approaches and their uses in applications. The intended audience consists of practitioners and researchers who wish to gain a good understanding of portfolio decision analysis and insights into how PDA methods can be leveraged in different application contexts. The book can also be employed in courses at the post-graduate level.

The current volume presents four chapters touching on some of the most important and modern areas of research in Mathematical Finance: asset price bubbles (by Philip Protter); energy markets (by Fred Espen Benth); investment under transaction costs (by Paolo Guasoni and Johannes Muhle-Karbe); and numerical methods for solving stochastic equations (by Dan Crisan, K. Manolarakis and C. Nee).The Paris-Princeton Lecture Notes on Mathematical Finance, of which this is the fifth volume, publish cutting-edge research in self-contained, expository articles from renowned specialists. The aim is to produce a series of articles that can serve as an introductory reference source for research in the field.

Keynes, the Keynesians and Monetarism is a major contribution to the continuing debate on macroeconomic policy-making. Tim Congdon has been a strong supporter of monetarist economic principles for over 30 years. His writings - in the newspapers and for parliamentary committees, as well as in academic journals - played an influential role in the transformation of British macroeconomic policy in the 1980s and 1990s. This book brings together the main papers written by the author since his 1992 collection, Reflections on Monetarism. It challenges several 'conventional wisdoms' about UK macroeconomic policy (and thinking about policy), arguing - for example - that the Keynesians' advocacy of incomes policy and fiscal activism in the immediate post-war decades did not have a clear basis in Keynes's own writings. The book denies that the UK had a 'Keynesian revolution', in the sense of a deliberately pursued fiscal activism to promote 'full employment'. Implicit throughout the volume is a distinctive view of how the economy works, with an account of the transmission mechanism (from money to the economy) in which movements in asset prices and aggregate demand are strongly influenced by the quantity of money. Congdon uses this approach to demonstrate that monetary policy has had more powerful effects on macroeconomic activity in the post-war period than fiscal policy. He also suggests that the now fashionable 'New Keynesian' view of policy-making acknowledges the primacy of monetary policy and would be better termed 'output gap monetarism'. In short, Keynes, the Keynesians and Monetarism contends that monetarism defeated Keynesianism in the battle of ideas in the 1970s and 1980s. The achievement of greater macroeconomic stability in the last 15 years is largely due to the impact of monetarist thinking on policy-making. The book is clearly and attractively written, and covers topics that are fundamental to macroeconomic thinking and policy-making. It will be a provocative and appealing read for scholars at all levels of economics, macroeconomics and monetary theory. It will also find an audience among policymakers in central banks and finance ministries, business economists working in companies, and financial economists in the City of London and other centres.

The Global Curse of the Federal Reserve reveals and explores the missing link between the Austrian School of Economics and behavioral finance theory. Monetary instability is the source of the waves of irrational exuberance (sometimes described as "asset price inflation"), which spread so much economic destruction and geo-political turmoil when they break. The largest and most destructive waves in the past 100 years have all been powered by monetary turmoil created by the Federal Reserve. Dr. Brown argues that flawed monetary practice and principles--most recently in the form of Bernanke-ism--have been responsible for the Fed-made havoc. The author comes to two optimistic conclusions. First, political forces in the US will one day gain sufficient strength to repeal Bernanke-ism. But the new revolutionaries must learn from the mistakes of the first monetarist revolution. Brown argues for the end of the Fed as a policy-making institution. Second, it is possible for investors to build substantial protection for their wealth and even profit from monetary chaos unleashed by the Federal Reserve--but this depends on throwing overboard much of the established wisdom about optimal portfolio management.

The financial integration of Europe is both welcomed as an economic driving force and watched with concern as a source of potential stability. After all, changing financial, regulatory and corporate ownership structures are fuelling competition, capital mobility and financial intermediation, but at the same time creating new systemic risks. With a special focus on Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, the contributors to this book explore a wide spectrum of underlying issues, including the finance-growth nexus, credit boom patterns, the implications of foreign bank entry modes, lessons learned from old EU member states and commercial bank strategies. Authoritative views from central bank officials and policymakers are complemented with a special focus on empirical and econometric evidence from academia as well as practical insights from key financial market players. This unique collection will be of great interest to economists and experts in the fields of financial markets and European integration from central, commercial and investment banks, governments, international organizations, universities and research institutes.

The creation of the European Central Bank and the Euro have brought new challenges to EU integration and economic policy. This book looks into issues of monetary and factor market policies. The analysis presents new theoretical and empirical research on the current decline of the Euro. Issues regarding exchange rate policies and international economic relations are also addressed.

The Asian crisis of 1997-1998 was a major influence on macroeconomic thinking concerning exchange rate regimes, the functioning of international institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, and international contagion of macroeconomic instability from one country to another. Exchange Rate Regimes and Macroeconomic Stability offers perspectives on these issues from the viewpoints of two Nobel Laureates, an IMF economist, and Asian economists. This book contributes new ideas to the ongoing debate on the role of domestic monetary authorities and international institutions in reducing the likelihood of international financial crises, as well as the problems associated with various exchange rate regimes from the standpoint of macroeconomic stability. Overall, the chapters contained in this volume offer interesting perspectives, which have been stimulated by the recent events in the foreign exchange market. They provide a useful reference for anyone interested in the development of exchange rate regimes, and represent considerable reflection by economists half a century after Bretton Woods.

This book reviews nine Supreme Court cases and decisions that dealt with monetary laws and gives a summary history of monetary events and policies as they were affected by the Court's decisions. Several cases and decisions had notable consequences on the monetary history of the United States, some of which were blatant misjudgments stimulated by political pressures. The cases included in this book begin with McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819 and end with the Gold Clause Cases in 1934-5. Constitutional Money examines three institutions that were prominent in these decisions: the Supreme Court, the gold standard and the Federal Reserve System. The final chapter describes the adjustments necessary to return to a gold standard and briefly examines the constitutional alternatives.

In this updated, second edition of the highly acclaimed international best seller, "The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures," Richard Duncan describes the flaws in the international monetary system that have destabilized the global economy and that may soon culminate in a deflation-induced worldwide economic slump.

"The Dollar Crisis" is divided into five parts:

Part One describes how the US trade deficits, which now exceed US$1 million a minute, have destabilized the global economy by creating a worldwide credit bubble.

Part Two explains why these giant deficits cannot persist and why a US recession and a collapse in the value of the Dollar are unavoidable.

Part Three analyzes the extraordinarily harmful impact that the US recession and the collapse of the Dollar will have on the rest of the world.

Part Four offers original recommendations that, if implemented, would help mitigate the damage of the coming worldwide downturn and put in place the foundations for balanced and sustainable economic growth in the decades ahead.

Part Five, which has been newly added to the second edition, describes the extraordinary evolution of this crisis since the first edition was completed in September 2002. It also considers how the Dollar Crisis is likely to unfold over the years immediately ahead, the likely policy response to the crisis, and why that response cannot succeed.

The Dollar Standard is inherently flawed and increasingly unstable. Its collapse will be the most important economic event of the 21st Century.

Credit spreads express how markets evaluate the riskiness of corporate bonds compared to risk-free investments. Since credit spreads have been highly volatile especially during the last decade it is important for academics and practitioners alike to understand the dynamic interdependencies between credit spreads and their determinants. Based on a sample of European corporate bonds and different macroeconomic variables the author analyzes the determinants of credit spreads during the period of 1999 to 2009. With a macro-finance term structure model he shows that the European corporate bond market is largely integrated with some remaining segmentation. Furthermore, panel regressions yield that declining liquidity leads to a significant widening of credit spreads especially during the recent financial crisis. Finally, he demonstrates based on a cointegration analysis that a long-term relationship exists between credit spreads and their determinants and that credit spreads were significantly overpriced after the collapse of Lehman Brothers but have almost returned to equilibrium towards the end of 2009.

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.

East Asian countries - currently the most dynamic region of the global economy - have recently pursued trade liberalization through the adoption of various forms of bilateral and plurilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The book explores the key issues and possible outcomes arising from this departure from the region's traditional multilateral approach to trade liberalization. Implications of this new approach for the region as a whole, and key participating individual economies and blocs of economies, are emphasized. New East Asian Regionalism includes up-to-date analysis of the most recent developments in FTAs between countries in East Asia, as well as those involving countries from outside the region. Furthermore, the book includes invaluable projections on economic and welfare outcomes of regional trade agreements, using the very latest empirical techniques, and data. The book also considers the implications arising from closer financial integration in the region. This book will be warmly welcomed by scholars of regional science, international economics and business, as well as Asian studies. Policymakers at both the national government and international organization level will also find this book of great interest.

The progressive economics writer redefines the national conversation about American freedom "Mike Konczal [is] one of our most powerful advocates of financial reform' [a] heroic critic of austerity' and a huge resource for progressives."-Paul Krugman Health insurance, student loan debt, retirement security, child care, work-life balance, access to home ownership-these are the issues driving America's current political debates. And they are all linked, as this brilliant and timely book reveals, by a single question: should we allow the free market to determine our lives? In the tradition of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, noted economic commentator Mike Konczal answers this question with a resounding no. Freedom from the Market blends passionate political argument and a bold new take on American history to reveal that, from the earliest days of the republic, Americans have defined freedom as what we keep free from the control of the market. With chapters on the history of the Homestead Act and land ownership, the eight-hour work day and free time, social insurance and Social Security, World War II day cares, Medicare and desegregation, free public colleges, intellectual property, and the public corporation, Konczal shows how citizens have fought to ensure that everyone has access to the conditions that make us free. At a time when millions of Americans-and more and more politicians-are questioning the unregulated free market, Freedom from the Market offers a new narrative, and new intellectual ammunition, for the fight that lies ahead.

The recent global ?nancial crisis has made ?nancial liberalization a topic of great academic and practical interest. This book makes new contributions to the topic by combining fact-?nding, empirical analysis, and theory to examine the relationship between ?nancial liberalization and economic growth. Among its contributions, the book provides detailed country assessments on the effects of ?nancial liberalization, including its striking impact on the banking sector. Although an important goal of ?nancial deregulation has been to help ?nancial institutions better perform their role in intermediating resources, the book models how deregulation may fail to achieve that goal in countries with underdeveloped ?nancial markets and institutions. For that purpose, the book draws on actual experience in Kenya, Malawi, Botswana, and Thailand. This book should constitute important reading for students of ?nancial economics, researchers and general academics, ?nancial practitioners, policymakers, and teachers of economics. North Carolina, USA Steven L. Schwarcz December 2008 Stanley A. Star Professor of Law & Business, Duke University Founding Director, Duke Global Capital Markets Center Durham vii Abstract and Preface The latest global ?nancial and economic crisis of 2008 shows the need to - examine the desirability of ?nancial liberalization and the basis for the view that ?nancial deregulation by itself cannot be considered as a substitute for better economic management. The literature on ?nancial liberalization has identi?ed various mechanisms through which removing controls on interest rates may impact economic growth.

"Lawrence H. White deals with a major issue of the 1990s--reprivatization of money. He makes a cogent argument and presents evidence that private, competing currencies would provide more monetary stability than do central banks. Surprisingly enough, modern private money may emerge first in Eastern Europe, where the gap between the economy's need and the government's money is greates."
--Richard Rahn, Vice President and Chief Economists, U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"Boldly, White makes a persuasive case for free banking....In time, we may well look back and regard "Competition and Currency" as crucial in the development of the economy and economic thought of the future."
-- The New York City Tribune

"White is a leading analyst of a laissez-faire monetary system featuring a privately issued money supply. HIs perceptive insights force a rethinking of our present regulated monetary system and of what kind of reforms will remedy its defects. Avery worthwhile collection of essays for all students of monetary theory."
--Philip Cagan, Columbia University

"White is a leading analyst of a laissez-faire monetary system featuring a privately issued money supply. HIs perceptive insights force a rethinking of our present regulated monetary system and of what kind of reforms will remedy its defects. A very worthwhile collection of essays for all students of monetary theory."
--Phillip Cagan, Columbia University

"Newcomers to the literature...would be recommended to start with White's volume, where each paper is self-contained in its handling of particular aspects of free banking...Highly recommended as clear, well-argued expositions of the case for free banking, challengingassumptions common to much of monetary economics. It is particularly apposite that these assumptions be questioned at a time when institutional reform is so much on the agenda."
--Sheila C. Dow, The Economic Journal

Euro Crash diagnoses the three fatal design flaws in EMU as constructed by the Maastricht Treaty and analyses future likely monetary scenarios for Europe, demonstrating how the best of these would be the creation of a new narrow monetary union between France and Germany founded on strict monetarist principle and without a European Central Bank.

This book is an up-to-date, authoritative and comprehensive analysis of the key issues and challenges facing regional currency area projects in the context of financial globalization. The authors focus on several central issues that emerged during the experiences of the 1990s and 2000s: exchange-rate regimes and optimal currency area theory; exchange-rate regimes in emerging countries, international capital markets and regional currency areas; EMU and the euro; exchange-rate regimes in Central and Eastern Europe; Asia and Latin America; dollarization and the coordination of macroeconomic policies in the presence of regional currency areas. Regional Currency Areas in Financial Globalization will have wide appeal to scholars and researchers of money and finance, and international economics, as well as economists working in international financial institutions or development banks, and bankers.

Now in its third incarnation, this widely acclaimed and popular text has again been fully updated and revised by the author. There is a bewildering array of models to explain the volatility of exchange rates since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s. It is therefore invaluable that Hans Visser is able to bring method to this 'model madness' by grouping the various theories according to the time period for which their explanation is relevant, and further subdividing them according to their assumptions as to price flexibility and international financial asset substitutability. A Guide to International Monetary Economics is a systematic overview of exchange rate theories, an analysis of exchange rate systems and a discussion of exchange rate policies including discussion of the obstacles that may confront policymakers while running any particular system. This third edition emphasises recent developments such as the creation and expansion of the euro and the radical solution of dollarisation. The book is a concise treatment of this complex field and does not encumber the reader with a surfeit of potentially distracting institutional details. As with previous editions, the emphasis is on the economic reasoning behind the formulae while introducing students to the mathematics that will enable them to pursue further reading. This book is aimed at postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students in general and international economics and international finance, as well as business management scholars and researchers specialising in finance. Professional economists wishing to bring up to date their knowledge of the subject will also find much within this book of value to them.

First published in 1983, this is the second of two volumes on the causes and cure of stagflation - that combination of mass unemployment and rapid inflation that is currently afflicting the mixed economies of the industrially developed world. The authors deplore the unemployment due to the failure of governments to adopt Keynesian measures for the expansion of economic activity, but recognise that in present conditions such measures would lead to an unacceptable and explosive inflation of money wages and prices. They therefore advocate a dual strategy of financial policies for a steady expansion of total money incomes combined with individual wage rates set at levels to promote employment. The book is of importance for all those concerned with macroeconomic theory and policy. The description of the meaning of a New Keynesian policy and of the arguments for it have been written in a way which should be intelligible to policy-makers and students, and not only to economists with technical training. Professional macroeconomists will be interested not only in these sections but also in the fully specified macroeconomic model used to analyse New Keynesian policies in economic terms and to carry out a counterfactual re-running of history. In addition, the unusually detailed exposition of the application of control techniques to a difficult multivariable control problem also makes the book of interest to control engineers who wish to acquaint themselves with recent generalisations of classical frequency response methods.

Thoroughly updated and expanded with a new chapter on blockchain and increased coverage of cryptocurrency, as well as new data, this established advanced undergraduate textbook approaches the subject via first principles. It builds on a simple, clear monetary model and applies this framework consistently to a variety of monetary questions. Starting with trade being mutually beneficial, the authors demonstrate that money makes people better off, and that government money competes against other means of payments, including other types of government payments. After developing each of these topics, the book tackles the issue of money competing against other stores of value, examining issues associated with trade, finance, and modern banking. From simple economies to modern economies, the authors address the role banks play in making more trade possible, concluding with the information problems plaguing modern banking.

The present global monetary regime is based on floating among the major advanced countries. A key underlying factor behind the present regime is credibility to maintain stable monetary policies. The origin of credibility in monetary regimes goes back to the pre-1914 classical gold standard. In that regime, adherence by central banks to the rule of convertibility of national currencies in terms of a fixed weight of gold provided a nominal anchor to the price level. Between 1914 and the present several monetary regimes gradually moved away from gold, with varying success in maintaining price stability and credibility. In this book, the editors present ten studies combining historical narrative with econometrics that analyze the role of credibility in four monetary regimes, from the gold standard to the present managed float.

Looking from the 11th century to the 20th century, Kuroda explores how money was used and how currencies evolved in transactions within local communities and in broader trade networks. The discussion covers Asia, Europe and Africa and highlights an impressive global interconnectedness in the pre-modern era as well as the modern age. Drawing on a remarkable range of primary and secondary sources, Kuroda reveals that cash transactions were not confined to dealings between people occupying different roles in the division of labour (for example shopkeepers and farmers), rather that peasants were in fact great users of cash, even in transactions between themselves. The book presents a new categorization framework for aligning exchange transactions with money usage choices. This fascinating monograph will be of great interest to advanced students and researchers of economic history, financial history, global history and monetary studies.

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.

Euro Crash diagnoses the three fatal design flaws in EMU as constructed by the Maastricht Treaty and analyses future likely monetary scenarios for Europe, demonstrating how the best of these would be the creation of a new narrow monetary union between France and Germany founded on strict monetarist principle and without a European Central Bank.