This important book tackles the problem of inflation in contract law - whether, and to what extent, contract rules should take inflation into account.The book offers an original approach in proposing that the distributive effects of inflation are an important factor in the design of contract rules. The author also finds that the wealth distribution caused by inflation is relevant to the design of contract rules whichever normative perspective of the contract law one adopts. The book draws theoretical and practical implications of the analysis and suggests that different starting points will result in different solutions. Inflation and the Enforcement of Contracts is essential to anyone interested in research or policy making in the area of contract law.

Nominal yields on government debt in several countries have fallen very near their zero lower bound (ZLB), causing a liquidity trap and limiting the capacity to stimulate economic growth. This book provides a comprehensive reference to ZLB structure modeling in an applied setting.

First published in 1989, The Economics of the Swap Market looks at how the swap has become a commonplace tool for corporations throughout the OECD world to 'lock-in' interest rates on their borrowing. The aim of The Economics of the Swap Market, is to contribute to a redressing of the balance. Subjects covered include both those conventionally falling within the scope of micro-economics and of macroeconomics, beginning with an examination of the forces behind the take-off the swap market and a formal setting out of key arbitrage relationships which hold in equilibrium between the swap markets on international capital flow.

Money and Banking provides an original and comprehensive interpretation of the debate on banking and the nature of money in Keynes's time from a post Keynesian point of view. The book traces the pre-history of monetary circuit theory and its challenge to mainstream analysis in the first four decades of the century, contrasting the neoclassical approach with the monetary theory of production. The author comprehensively examines and reconstructs the contributions of both well-known and more neglected authors to the debate on the nature of money and the function of the banks, from the viewpoint of a circuit theorist. He concludes with a comprehensive account of heterodox analyses of the creation of money by banks, beginning with Wicksell and ending with British and American proponents of 'free banking'.

In recent years, there has been a massive upsurge in interest in the psychology of thinking and reasoning. This book contains contributions from virtually all the main players involved in research into these areas. It focuses on three reasoning problems devised by Peter Wason which have inspired countless journal articles over the past 25 years: the selection task, the 2-4-6 task and the THOG problem. Despite this intense interest, the reasons why people make so many errors in these seemingly simple tasks are still not fully understood. A variety of different theoretical perspectives have been used in trying to explain performance. These include: the mental models approach, the pragmatic reasoning approach and the mental logic approach. All of the leading proponents of these theories have contributed chapters to this book in which they expand and update their theories. Other chapters, some reviewing the literature, others offering new theoretical perspectives, have been produced by leading researchers from both sides of the Atlantic. There is a final chapter from Peter Wason himself, whose early research prompted the initial interest in these areas. He describes how he came to create the tasks which have proved so influential. The entire book is in essence a tribute to his enormous contribution to research in the psychology of reasoning. This book will be of relevance to all those interested in human thinking, including students and researchers in psychology, cognitive science and philosophy.

Financial Innovation, Banking and Monetary Aggregates reviews the impact of financial innovation on the measurement of money and presents the first collection of country studies appraising the usefulness of Divisia indices in deriving monetary aggregates.Monetary aggregates are traditionally formed by simply summing various monetary components such as cash and balances in savings and cheque accounts. The monetary usefulness, or 'moneyness', of these components differs and can change as a result of innovation in banking, monetary transmission and payment services. To gauge the importance of such distortions and the merits of alternative weighted monetary indices, particularly Divisia indices, this volume brings together authoritative empirical studies of countries including the US, the UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Italy and Japan. The authors conclude by showing how Divisia monetary indices act as a useful supplement to traditional monetary aggregates. Financial Innovation, Banking and Monetary Aggregates will be welcomed by economists and financiers for questioning traditional assumptions about the usefulness of monetary aggregates and for its discussion of the wider implications of financial innovation in the banking sector.

Globalization and Money explores how men and women, particularly the poor and the unbanked in the global South, use money in ways that empower themselves and their families. Supriya Singh argues that money as a medium of relationships across cultures is a central component of globalization. She deftly weaves theory and individual stories to show how money is emblematic of interconnected markets, the half of the world that is unbanked, and gender disparities. She shows how men s and women s banking patterns are tied to their management of money in the household. Migrants send money home to show they care for their families and communities left behind. Yet these remittances are far from symbolic; instead they represent more than three times the total amount of official development assistance. This book illustrates how many of the most exciting changes in harnessing people s savings; widening credit and insurance; and lowering the cost of technologies, payments and money transfers are taking place in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Singh demonstrates how strategies to help the poor and marginalized have gone global in South South conversations, making us rethink the contours of globalization and money.

The scope for financial crime has widened with the expansion and increased integration of financial markets. Money laundering, terrorism financing and tax crime have all changed in both nature and dimension. As new technologies reduce the importance of physical proximity to major onshore financial centres so a new generation of Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs) have emerged. This accessible volume provides a deeper analysis of the economic, institutional and political features of the OFCs, in order to design the optimal international regulatory policy. Using a multidisciplinary approach with an international level of expertise, the book evaluates international policies regarding offshore countries on the basis of a systematic analysis of their characteristics.

Since the turn of the 21st century, the global economy has faced several significant financial crises such as the monetary mismanagements of the EURO Zone countries struggling with sovereign debt problems, the Global Financial Crisis between 2007 and 2009 preceded by the housing market collapse, and the Quantitative Easing Policies used by the US Central Bank. The Impacts of Monetary Policy in the 21st Century: Perspectives from Emerging Economies explores and analyses how monetary authorities have handled and continue to confront these issues of economic crises at both a global and country-specific level. The book establishes the effect of monetary policies upon economic indicators during the 21st Century at the global, regional, group or country levels, with an emphasis upon emerging economies such as India. In looking at the effects of globalization, demonetization and inflation targeting through the use of panel regression models, unit root tests and case studies, the book provides a unique coverage of quantitative financial economics. The Impacts of Monetary Policy in the 21st Century is an illuminating book for postgraduate-level students, researchers and academics in the fields of economics and finance to help develop their understanding of the severe impact of monetary policies upon global economic systems and emerging economies.

We have experienced an era of extreme anti-inflationary policy combined with debts and deficits, the result of which has been a decrease in social stability. This book examines how using mainstream theory as the basis for economic decisions leads to misunderstandings of central concepts of our economic reality. It aims to establish a better understanding of the discrepancies between the current mainstream economic theory and the economy experienced in business and politics. This ambitious and wide-ranging volume begins the project of rethinking the approach of economics to money. In this new light, concepts such as valuation, price, uncertainty, growth and aggregation are interpreted differently, even as analytical inconsistencies and even intrinsic contradictions between these concepts arise. A central theme of the book is the use of money as a measure and whether the disconnect between money as a form of measurement and money as it is used in the real world can be maintained. This book calls for a radical rethinking of the basis of much of the modern study of economics. It will be of interest to researchers concerned with monetary economics, finance, political economy and economic philosophy.

The increasing capital flows in the emerging markets and developed countries have raised various concerns worldwide. One main concern is the impact of the sharp decline of capital flows - so-called sudden stops - on financial markets and the stability of banking systems and the economy. The sudden stops and banking crises have been identified as the two main features of most financial crises, including the recent Asian Financial Crisis and Global Financial Crisis. However, how capital flows and banking crises are connected still remains unanswered. Most current studies on capital flows are empirical work, which faces various challenges. The challenges include how data has been collected and measured in each country and how sensitive the results are to the data and the adopted methodologies. Moreover, the links between capital flows and banking systems have been neglected. This book helps provide some insight into the challenges faced by empirical studies and the lessons of the recent crises. The book develops theoretical analysis to deepen our understanding on how capital flows, banking systems and financial markets are linked with each other and provides constructive policy implications by overcoming the empirical challenges.

A stable and sound financial system plays a critical role in mediating funds from surplus units to investors, making it a prerequisite for economic development. Financial intermediaries have been vulnerable to adverse changes in the local and global economy and experienced frequent bubble-and-bust episodes historically. Analyses of financial crises reveal that the incentive created by neo-liberal financial principles is inconsistent with stable financial systems, and viable solutions require structuring institutions in a way that incentives are well aligned with the fundamental principles of financial systems. By drawing on the theoretical framework of the financial restraint model, this book analyses financial sectors' rents or bank rents and their effects on banks' performance and stability, and presents evidence on the relationship between rent and incentive through case studies of both developed and developing countries.

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.

An Anthropology of Money: A Critical Introduction shows how our present monetary system was imposed by elites and how they benefit from it. The book poses the question: how, by looking at different forms of money, can we appreciate that they have different effects? The authors demonstrate how modern money requires perpetual growth, an increase in inequality, environmental devastation, increasing commoditization, and, consequently, the perpetual consumption of ever more stuff. These are not intrinsic features of money, but, rather, of debt-money. This text shows that, through studying money in other cultures, we can have money that better serves the broader goals of society.

This book reflects the current state of discussion about agricultural and rural finance in developing and transition countries. It provides insight into specific themes, such as commodity value chains, farm banking and risk management in agricultural banking, structured finance, crop insurance, mobile banking and how to increase effectiveness in rural finance. Case studies illustrate various aspects of agricultural and rural finance in developing economies. The book is based on one of the yearly financial Sector Development Symposia held by the KfW Development Bank.

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 study, first published in 1979, examines and contrasts two concepts of credit rationing. The first concept takes the relevant price of credit to be the explicit interest rate on the loan and defines the demand for credit as the amount an individual borrower would like to receive at that rate. Under the alternative definition, the price of credit consists of the complete set of loan terms confronting a class of borrowers with given characteristics, while the demand for credit equals the total number of loan which members of the class would like to receive at those terms. This title will be of interest to students of monetary economics.

This study, first published in 1994, is intended to deepen the readers understanding of the phenomenon of equilibrium credit rationing in two areas. The first area concerns the form that equilibrium credit rationing assumes and its importance in determining the behaviour of interest rates. The second concerns the role of equilibrium credit rationing in transmitting monetary shocks to the real sector. This title will be of interest to students of monetary economics.

Meghnad Desai's work presents a significant challenge to economics as currently practised. This volume brings together a collection of essays on issues in macroeconomics and monetary theory from an unorthodox but rigorous position. Beginning with a series of essays which address the inflation problem using an extension of the Goodwin model, the volume continues with his revisionist interpretation of the Phillips Curve, assessments of monetarism, discussion of the economics of Keynes and Hayek, and an original paper on monetary theory. Later chapters include the author's work on applied econometrics, endogenous and exogenous money, and financial innovation. The volume also includes a substantial autobiographical preface, in which Lord Desai explains how he became an economist and the influences behind the development of his thought, as well as a specific introduction explaining how he came to produce the papers included in this volume.

Widely considered the crowning achievement in the history of international monetary relations, the classical gold standard (1880-1914) has long been treated like a holy relic. Its veneration, however, has done more to obscure than to reveal the actual nature of the era's monetary system. In The Anatomy of an International Monetary Regime, Giulio M. Gallarotti addresses the nature of the classical gold standard in its international context, offering the first comprehensive and systematic treatment of the subject.
Three fundamental questions are essential to the discussion: How did the regime originate? How did it work? Why did it persist? Gallarotti uses an interdisciplinary approach that draws upon politics, economics, and ideology to explain the answers. He challenges traditional assumptions about the period, arguing that cooperation among nations or central banks was not a principal factor in either the origin or stability of the system, and that neither the British state nor the Bank of England were the leaders or managers of the gold standard. Rather, a decentralized process involving the status of gold, industrialization and economic development, the politics of gold, and liberal economic ideology provided converging incentives for starting and maintaining the system.
Gallarotti's study presents the most comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination available of the nature of monetary relations in the four decades before World War I. His important, revisionist view will alter the way we think about a crucial period in the growth of the international monetary system. It will be essential reading for scholars and students of economic history and policy.

Other-regarding preferences, hence appreciation of others' welfare, are mainly culturally transmitted, whereby most of the development takes place in the sensitive period of childhood and adolescence. This work analyzes the development as well as possible influencing factors of other-regarding preferences during this period. To test the hypotheses derived from developmental and socialization aspects, the author conducts a survey measuring altruistic and cooperative preferences for German pupils. Results show that over the age span studied altruism and cooperation are increasingly important. Individual differences show none or only small relationship with measures of other-regarding preferences while differences in school environments are similarly important to age differences.

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.

Originally published in 1986. This helpful text sets out what appears to make exchange rates change and shows how these various factors contribute to an explanation of the past. It considers the problems of providing satisfactory forecasts of the exchange rate while presenting the methods used, outlining their drawbacks and speculating on future ways forward. Laid out to move from empirical issues to theory and on to policy, this book is easily of use to those interested in macroeconomics, applied economics and international economics as well as economic history.

Originally published in 1983. With the prevailing uncertainties and wild fluctuation in exchange values at the time, the forward market in foreign exchange had become a vital issue for both governments and business corporations. This book by an expert practitioner in foreign exchange dealing describes how the forward market functions and analyses the constituent elements in its behaviour. The two principal types of foreign exchange deal are examined; forward outright and swap, and explanations are given of how both operate. The linkage between forward rates and interest rates is also considered and the book investigates what factors cause deviation from parity conditions. In addition, there is a discussion of political risk and the forward contract and the role of speculation in forward exchange as well as the methods of hedging.