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We apply a new approach to a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross-border equity flows between 14 countries, 1989-96. The model integrates elements of the finance literature on portfolio composition and the international macroeconomics and asset trade literature. Gross asset flows depend on market size in both source and destination country as well as trading costs, in which both information and the transaction technology play a role. Distance proxies some information costs, and other variables explicitly represent information transmission, an information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors, and the efficiency of transactions. The remarkably good results have strong implications for theories of asset trade. We find that the geography of information is the main determinant of the pattern of international transactions, while there is little support in our data for diversification and return-chasing motives for transactions."--Authors.
"Gross stocks of foreign assets have increased rapidly relative to national outputs since 1990, and the short-run capital gains and losses on those assets can amount to significant fractions of GDP. These fluctuations in asset values render the national income and product account measure of the current account balance increasingly inadequate as a summary of the change in a country's net foreign assets. Nonetheless, unusually large current account imbalances, especially deficits, should remain high on policymakers' list of concerns, even for the richer and less credit-constrained countries. Extreme imbalances signal the need for large and perhaps abrupt real exchange rate changes in the futur...
As a long-run competitor and collaborator with the dollar, the euro creates the potential for a bipolar international monetary system, offering unprecedented challenges and opportunities to economic policymakers. This book explores the euro's international role, its record till its fifth year, and its future.
Finance and Development, June 2015.
This report presents a set of concrete proposals of increasing ambition for the reform of the international monetary system. The proposals aim at improving the international provision of liquidity in order to limit the effects of individual and systemic crises and decrease their frequency. The recommendations outlined in this report include: / Develop alternatives to US Treasuries as the dominant reserve asset, including the issuance of mutually guaranteed European bonds and (in the more distant future) the development of a yuan bond market. / Make permanent the temporary swap agreements that were put in place between central banks during the crisis. Establish a starshaped structure of swap ...
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Fifty years ago, in March 1973, the major industrial economies abandoned fixed exchange rates, conclusively ending the post–World War II Bretton Woods arrangements. Proponents believed their action would strengthen countries' ability to reconcile domestic macroeconomic policies with the balance of payments. But opponents feared it would initiate a new era of instability and financial shocks. Since 1973, much of the world has moved away from fixed exchange rates to a variety of regimes based on considerable exchange rate flexibility. But international trade conflicts and unstable capital flows, along with a rise in financial crises around the world, have nonetheless accompanied the global s...
Globalization has been a persistent phenomenon of the post-war period. The gross volume of cross-border capital flows has grown at an average of 25 percent a year, and trade in goods and services has also increased, albeit not as dramatically, but at least twice as fast as world GDP over the past 20 years. Yet, consumers and investors continue to spend and hold a disproportionate share of their assets in local markets--the so-called home-bias has been emphasized by many recent empirical studies. For many researchers, this home bias reflects information asymmetries and the fact that acquiring information across international borders is relatively costly. The main objective of the authors is t...
The history of debt relief goes back several decades. It reveals that a country s accumulation of unsustainable debt stems from such factors as deficiencies in macroeconomic management, adverse terms-of-trade shocks, and poor governance. Debt-relief initiatives have provided debt-burdened countries with the opportunity for a fresh start, but whether the benefits of debt relief can be preserved depends on transformations in a country s policies and institutions. In 1996, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative was launched as the first comprehensive, multilateral, debt-relief framework for low-income countries. In 2005, the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative was established, wh...
Why the current Bretton Woods-like international financial system, featuring large current account deficits in the center country, the United States, and massive reserve accumulation by the periphery, is not sustainable. In Global Imbalances and the Lessons of Bretton Woods, Barry Eichengreen takes issue with the argument that today's international financial system is largely analogous to the Bretton Woods System of the period 1958 to 1973. Then, as now, it has been argued, the United States ran balance of payment deficits, provided international reserves to other countries, and acted as export market of last resort for the rest of the world. Then, as now, the story continues, other countrie...