This book describes the remarkable path which led to the Swiss Franc becoming the strong international currency that it is today. Ernst Baltensperger and Peter Kugler use Swiss monetary history to provide valuable insights into a number of issues concerning the organization and development of monetary institutions and currency that shaped the structure of financial markets and affected the economic course of a country in important ways. They investigate a number of topics, including the functioning of a world without a central bank, the role of competition and monopoly in money and banking, the functioning of monetary unions, monetary policy of small open economies under fixed and flexible exchange rates, the stability of money demand and supply under different monetary regimes, and the monetary and macroeconomic effects of Swiss Banking and Finance. Swiss Monetary History since the Early 19th Century illustrates the value of monetary history for understanding financial markets and macroeconomics today.

This volume evolved from a conference on "Financial Markets Economet- rics" held at the ZEW (Zentrum fiir Europaische Wirtschaftsforschung) in Mannheim, Germany in February, 1992. However, not all papers included in this volume were presented at the conference. In some cases the papers are follow-up papers to the ones presented. The purpose of the conference was to bring together researchers from several European countries to discuss their applications of recent economet- ric methods to the analysis of financial markets. From a methodological point of view the main emphasis of the conference papers was on cointe- gration analysis and ARCH modelling. In . cointegration analysis the links between long-run components of time series are studied and the methods can .be applied to the determination of equilibrium relationships between the vari- ables, whereas ARCH models (ARCH is the acronym of autoregressive condi- tional heteroskedasticity) are concerned with the measurement and analysis of changing variances in time series. These two models have been the most significant innovations' for the empirical analysis of financial time series in recent years. Six papers of this volume apply cointegration analysis (the papers by MacDonald/Marsh, Hansen, Ronning, Garbers, Kirchgassner/Wolters, and Kunst/Polasek) and seven papers deal with ARCH models (Kramer/Runde, Drost, Kunst/Polasek, Kugler, Eggington/Hall, Koedijk/Stork/deVries, and Demos/Sentana/Shah). Other econometric methods and models applied in the papers include factor analysis (Eggington/Hall and Demos/Sentana/- Shah), vector autoregressions (Kirchgassner/Wolters and Kunst/Polasek), Markov-switching models (Garbers and Kaehler /Marnet), spectral analysis (Kirchgassner/Wolters), stable Paretian distributions (Kramer/Runde and Drost) and ARFIMA models (Drost).

This volume provides an interdisciplinary approach to this central research topic. Firstly, the hippocampus is presented generally as a model for experiments on neurotransmission in the central nervous system; secondly, special features of synaptic organisation and synaptic transmission in this area of the brain are introduced. Of particular note is the wide-ranging methodological approach which includes light and electron microscopy, immunocytochemistry, Golgi/EM techniques, intracellular differentiation and intracellular colorings, histochemistry of transmitter enzymes and receptoraudiography. The reader thereby gains insight into the broad scope of methodological possibilities for the examination of such a complex problem as neurotransmission in the hippocampus.

Sie kennen das bestimmt: Sie wachen eines Morgens in einem wildfremden Bett auf, konnen sich an absolut nichts vom Vortag erinnern, mussen sich mit gekrankten Kuhlschranken und neurotischen Navigationsgeraten auseinander setzen und erfahren nebenbei, dass sie von einer interdimensional tatigen Organisation als Tester fur deren verschiedene Weltmodelle angeheuert wurden. Und als ob das nicht schon genugen wurde mussen sie sich noch mit schlecht gelauntem Gemuse herumschlagen. Das Buch erzahlt die fiktive Geschichte von Max, der sich mit bevormundenden Kuhlschranken, spottenden Navigationsgeraten, divenhaften Fahrstuhlen, einen digitalen Assistenten in Frauenkleidern, einer nicht ganz menschlichen Hornbrille, seinen Stimmen im Kopf, Mannern in Tarnanzugen, Realitatsverformern, der Firma und Erika in einer moglichen Zukunft auseinander setzen muss. Und in lustig.