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How is finance related to economic processes, and why should it be viewed as a public good requiring policy action? This book provides an answer. The book develops a practical framework for safeguarding financial stability, which encompasses both prevention and resolution of problems. It also examines on-going and future challenges to financial stability posed by globalization, a growing reliance on derivatives and their markets, and the capital market activities of insurers and reinsurers.
Models of “contagion” rely on market imperfections to explain why adverse shocks in one asset market might be associated with asset sales in many unrelated markets. This paper demonstrates that contagion can be explained with basic portfolio theory without recourse to market imperfections. It also demonstrates that “Value-at-Risk” portfolio management rules do not have significantly different consequences for portfolio rebalancing and contagion than other rules. The paper’s main conclusion is that portfolio diversification and leverage may be sufficient to explain why investors would find it optimal to sell many higher-risk assets when a shock to one asset occurs.
This paper examines how and why financial resources were channeled almost exclusively to specific asset markets in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States in the late 1980s. A decline in demand for funds by traditional borrowers, and a shift by savers from banks toward indirect securities investments were critical factors in all three cases. Until intermediaries and investors learned to evaluate new opportunities, funds were recycled in certain asset markets. The pressures on Japanese asset markets were particularly intense because of the size of Japan’s domestic saving relative to traditional domestic investment opportunities.
This paper analyzes the structural implications of EMU for international capital markets. It discusses the potential size of euro capital markets and the existing roles of European currencies in international capital markets. The paper also examines the euro’s impact on international securities markets, including the role of the ECB, the evolution of EMU securities markets, and aspects of systemic risk management. The implications for wholesale and retail banking markets are also discussed, as are the broader implications of the introduction of the euro for changes in international capital flows, international portfolios, and by implication exchange rates.
The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and national and international economic developments.
During the mid- to late 1980s, inflationary pressures were highly concentrated in asset markets in many industrial countries. This paper discusses why this may have occurred and then develops a forward-looking supply and demand model of the real estate market in which equilibrium prices depend on price expectations, monetary conditions, income, returns to alternative assets, and construction costs. In this model, the current equilibrium price is determined by expectations formed in different time periods by consumers and producers. The model and its more generalized dynamic specifications are estimated by maximum-likelihood methods. The empirical results do not reject the view that the relationship between real estate values and monetary policy was altered in 1980s.
The concept of fiscal impulse is defined, discussed, and differentiated from measures that attempt to summarize the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy. Two methodologies are briefly discussed and their corresponding measures presented for the G-7 countries over the ten-year period ending in 1989. Controversies about the measure are highlighted and potential improvements are also discussed.
What is the role of central banks in ensuring financial stability? This paper addresses this controversial subject, in part by drawing on the experiences in Europe, Japan, and the United States, and by examining four questions. What is meant by financial stability? Do central banks have a natural role in ensuring financial stability? What does a central bank need to execute this role effectively? How far have central banks actually gone in safeguarding financial stability? The experience drawn on in the paper suggest that central banks: have a natural role to play; at times may require supervisory information to execute this natural role; and have incurred risks to their balance sheets to ensure financial stability.
This paper identifies factors that contributed to the development and effectiveness of debt securities markets in the major advanced economies. Government securities markets have benefited from their international orientation—debt management is most effective when it is independent of monetary and exchange rate policies; and financial infrastructures should be patterned on the standards of liquidity, transparency, issuing and trading efficiency, and tax treatment. The same degree of consensus does not exist for corporate debt securities markets. The paper identifies six regulatory and market-created factors that help explain why the U.S. corporate debt market has flourished, while corporate debt securities markets elsewhere have only recently begun to develop.
Spurred by advances in information and computer technologies, financial liberalization and innovation took off inthe late 1970s. Although the changes in financial markets have been beneficial overall, our understanding of the new risks to financial stability lags behind, as demonstrated by the financial crises of the past couple of decades. The study of international financial stability - a public good - is still in its infancy. This pamphlet, aimed at stimulating further debate on the subject, proposes a definition of financial stability and a broad framework for safeguarding it without inhibiting its dynamic development or limiting its benefits.