Search

The interwar years saw the rise of New York to challenge London as the world’s leading provider of financial services. This paper will show that the current explanations fail to identify a key factor in New York’s rise. The City was prevented from operating a full capacity by a capital issues embargo, imposed by the Bank of England to support the pound. As a result, New York was able to enter the sector with little competition from London, and expand rapidly to issue over half of the global capital exported abroad in the 1920s. Without the embargo, this would not have been possible, as the London merchant banks were the most productive producers in the industry, a position built up over the previous half century. This result challenges the consensus that the return to gold was good for the City. The merchant banks suffered and lost business, suggesting that this policy was even more disastrous than is currently thought.

The half-century before World War I has been characterized as the first age of financial globalization. This paper focuses on the role and significance of the bondholders' organizations for the governance of this market. I argue that the outcome of these institutions depended on two dimensions: the institutional variation that characterized these organizations and their strategic interaction. These aspects are addressed using a model of sovereign debt with constant renegotiation. An original data set with information on the settlement of defaulted debts in the period 1870-1913 is used to test the implications of the model. Empirical results support the premise that the quality of bondholders' representation matters for the terms of settlement and the costs of renegotiation. Renegotiation-friendly but not debtor-friendly organizations yielded the best ex post results for their members. The representation of bondholders' interests by the issue banks, on the other hand, produced inferior outcomes.

This paper explores the determinants of sovereign bond yields during the classical gold standard period (1872-1913). Using the Pooled Mean Group methodology, we find that the main benefit of the gold standard can be seen as a short-hand device that enhanced a country's reputation in international capital markets. By conveying important information to investors and enhancing the speed of adjustment of sovereign bond spreads to long-run equilibrium levels, the gold standard allowed country risk to be priced more effectively. In contrast to other studies, our results indicate that fundamental factors appear to be more important in determining a country's creditworthiness in the long-run than the exchange rate regime per se.

Private equity, characterized by firms operating as privately held partnerships organizing the acquisition and 'taking private' of public companies, is currently dominating the business news due to deals growing rapidly in number and size. If the trend continues unabated, the 1989 prediction by economist Michael Jensen of 'the eclipse of the public corporation' could be proved accurate soon. This paper argues matters will work out much differently, with private equity being at least partially eclipsed. One possibility is that current market and legal conditions, which are highly congenial to public-to-private transactions, could be disrupted in ways that cause the private equity surge to stall or even go into reverse. The paper draws on history to make this point, discussing how the spectacular rise of conglomerates in the 1960s was reversed in subsequent decades and how the 1980s buyout boom led by LBO associations -- the private equity firms of the day -- collapsed. Factors that undercut conglomerate mergers and buyouts by LBO associations (e.g. the tightening of debt markets and increased regulation) potentially could do the same with the current wave of private equity buyouts, and cause at least a temporary eclipse of private equity deals. Even if conditions remain favorable to private equity, its eclipse is likely to occur in a different way. Privacy has been a hallmark of private equity, with industry leaders operating as secretive partnerships that negotiate buyouts behind closed doors and restructure portfolio companies outside the public gaze. However, assuming market conditions remain sufficiently favorable, top private equity firms, following the lead of the Blackstone Group, may well carry out public offerings. If this happens, then even if the taking private of publicly quoted companies remains a mainstream pursuit, the exercise will occur largely under the umbrella of public markets.

NBER Working Paper No. 26166; We examine equity market integration for 17 countries from 1913-2018. We use network analysis to measure the evolution of global stock market integration as well as stock market integration between and across countries. The empirical results suggest that long-run stock market integration looks like an unstable hook. Equity market integration first peaked in 1913 during the first era of globalization (1870-1913) when unfettered markets ruled the day. Integration declined over the next 60 years as countries experienced the Great Depression and shunned international capital markets. The end of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s ushered in the second period of globalization. Our empirical analysis suggests that stock market integration in the recent period of globalization has surpassed the first era of globalization in the last 10 years and currently has the highest level of equity market integration and network instability in world history.

We analyze cyclical co-movement in credit, house prices, equity prices, and longterm interest rates across 17 advanced economies. Using a time-varying multi-level dynamic factor model and more than 130 years of data, we analyze the dynamics of co-movement at different levels of aggregation and compare recent developments to earlier episodes such as the early era of financial globalization from 1880 to 1913 and the Great Depression. We find that joint global dynamics across various financial quantities and prices as well as variable-specific global co-movements are important to explain fluctuations in the data. From a historical perspective, global co-movement in financial variables is not a new phenomenon, but its importance has increased for some variables since the 1980s. For equity prices, global cycles play currently a historically unprecedented role, explaining more than half of the fluctuations in the data. Global cycles in credit and housing have become much more pronounced and longer, but their importance in explaining dynamics has only increased for some economies including the US, the UK and Nordic European countries. We also include GDP in the analysis and find an increasing role for a global business cycle.

This paper unveils a new resource for macroeconomic research: a long-run dataset covering disaggregated bank credit for 17 advanced economies since 1870. The new data show that the share of mortgages on banks’ balance sheets doubled in the course of the twentieth century, driven by a sharp rise of mortgage lending to households. Household debt to asset ratios have risen substantially in many countries. Financial stability risks have been increasingly linked to real estate lending booms, which are typically followed by deeper recessions and slower recoveries. Housing finance has come to play a central role in the modern macroeconomy.

We analyze how the role of different national currencies as international reserves was affected by the shift from fixed to flexible exchange rates. We extend data on the currency composition of foreign reserves backward and forward to investigate whether there was a shift in the determinants of the currency composition of international reserves around the breakdown of Bretton Woods. We find that inertia and policy-credibility effects in international reserve currency choice have become stronger post-Bretton Woods, while network effects appear to have weakened. We show that negative policy interventions designed to discourage international use of a currency have been more effective than positive interventions to encourage its use. These findings speak to the prospects of currencies like the euro and the renminbi seeking to acquire international reserve status and others like the U.S. dollar seeking to preserve it.

We examine the impact on bank performance of the adoption of SWIFT, a network-based technological infrastructure and set of standards for worldwide interbank telecommunication. We construct a new longitudinal dataset of 6848 banks in 29 countries in Europe and the Americas with the full history of adoption since SWIFT’s initial operations in 1977. Our results suggest that the adoption of SWIFT (i) has large effects on profitability in the long-term; (ii) these profitability effects are greater for small than for large banks; and (iii) exhibits significant network effects on performance. We use an in-depth field study to better understand the mechanisms underlying the effects on profitability.\ud \ud

This paper documents macroeconomic forecasting during the global financial crisis by two key central banks: the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The paper is the result of a collaborative effort between staff at the two institutions, allowing us to study the time-stamped forecasts as they were made throughout the crisis. The analysis does not exclusively focuses on point forecast performance. It also examines methodological contributions, including how financial market data could have been incorporated into the forecasting process. JEL Classification: C53, E37

This article makes an analysis of the main regulations used by the credit rating agencies on the financial market. The article describes the main specific legislation on credit rating agencies existing on the market. Credit rating agencies are issuing independent opinions on the reliability of an entity, of a debt, of financial obligations, or of a certain financial instrument. The credit ratings issued by the credit rating agencies established in the European Union are analysed by investors, debtors, issuers and governments, helping all these entities in making any decisions on investments and financing. These ratings may also serve as reference for determining their own funds, necessary to ensure the solvency or reference helping the investors in assessing any risks related to their investment activities. Rating agencies and the products they offer on the international capital market are subject of various researches, which mainly refer to market structure and organization, to the architecture of agencies` s rating systems, to the rating functions, to the controversies concerning rating activity, the role of rating agencies and rating quality.

Member states of the euro area have been struggling with the legacies of the severe financial and economic crisis for four years now. But debt ratios are still rising. Negative primary balances, low growth, and low inflation do not allow for a recovery similar to the one in the US after the Second World War. Between 1946 and 1953, the US was able to almost halve its debt with no haircuts. The crisis countries of the euro area were able to "buy time" with bailout packages and low interest rates. But as long as the other influencing factors are not developing more positively, it remains uncertain whether the current stabilization of the euro debt crisis is sustainable. The ECB's low interest rate policy undoubtedly offers some relief in this situation. First, the interest burden for most countries in the euro area has declined in recent years. This effect has tended to stifle increases in the debt ratio. Second, low interest rates strengthen the economy. In turn, this increases government tax revenue and improves the primary balance. Low interest rates have also played an important role in driving down the debt ratio in the US. At the moment they appear to be the only lever in the euro area with which to make euro area countries' debt more sustainable. What matters now is that they seize this opportunity.

Member states of the euro area have been struggling with the legacies of the severe financial and economic crisis for four years now. But debt ratios are still rising. Negative primary balances, low growth, and low inflation do not allow for a recovery similar to the one in the US after the Second World War. Between 1946 and 1953, the US was able to almost halve its debt with no haircuts. The crisis countries of the euro area were able to "buy time" with bailout packages and low interest rates. But as long as the other influencing factors are not developing more positively, it remains uncertain whether the current stabilization of the euro debt crisis is sustainable. The ECB's low interest rate policy undoubtedly offers some relief in this situation. First, the interest burden for most countries in the euro area has declined in recent years. This effect has tended to stifle increases in the debt ratio. Second, low interest rates strengthen the economy. In turn, this increases government tax revenue and improves the primary balance. Low interest rates have also played an important role in driving down the debt ratio in the US. At the moment they appear to be the only lever in the euro area with which to make euro area countries' debt more sustainable. What matters now is that they seize this opportunity. Seit vier Jahren kämpfen die Staaten des Euroraums gegen die Hinterlassenschaften der schweren Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise an. Aber noch immer steigen die Schuldenquoten. Für die Krisenstaaten des Euroraums wurde zwar mit Rettungspaketen und Niedrigzinsen "Zeit erkauft". Aber solange sich die anderen Einflussgrößen nicht positiver entwickeln, bleibt es ungewiss, ob die momentane Beruhigung der Euro-Verschuldungskrise nachhaltig ist. Zweifelsfrei stellt in dieser Situation die Niedrigzinspolitik der EZB eine Erleichterung dar. Zum einen ist die Zinslast für die meisten Eurostaaten in den letzten Jahren zurückgegangen. Dieser Effekt dämpft tendenziell das Wachstum der Schuldenquote. Zum anderen stärken die niedrigen Zinsen die Wirtschaft. Dies wiederum erhöht die Steuereinnahmen des Staates und verbessert den Primärsaldo. Niedrigzinsen haben auch bei der Rückführung der Schuldenquote in den USA eine große Rolle gespielt. Zwischen 1946 und 1953 konnten die USA ihren Schuldenstand ohne Schuldenschnitt fast halbieren. Negative Primärsalden, niedrige Wachstumsraten und die niedrige Inflationsrate lassen dies in der Euro-Schuldenkrise jedoch nicht zu. Deshalb scheinen Niedrigzinsen im Moment der einzige Hebel zu sein, mit dem die Schulden tragfähiger gemacht werden können. Nun kommt es darauf an, dass die Eurostaaten die Chance auch ergreifen.

This paper explores long wave theory, including Kondratieff's theory of cycles in production and relative prices; Kuznets's theory of cycles arising from infrastructure investments; Schumpeter's theory of cycles due to waves of technological innovation; Goodwin's theory of cyclical growth based on employment and wage share dynamics; Keynes–Kaldor–Kalecki's demand and investment-oriented theories of cycles; and Minsky's financial instability hypothesis whereby capitalist economies show a genetic propensity to boom–bust cycles. This literature has been out of favor for many years but recent developments suggest a re-examination is warranted and timely.

We examine the evolution of real per capita GDP around 100 systemic banking crises. Part of the costs of these crises owes to the protracted nature of recovery. On average, it takes about 8 years to reach the pre-crisis level of income; the median is about 6.5 years. Five to six years after the onset of crisis, only Germany and the United States (out of 12 systemic cases) have reached their 2007-2008 peaks in real income. Forty-five percent of the episodes recorded double dips. Post-war business cycles are not the relevant comparator for the recent crises in advanced economies.

Aktuelle wirtschaftshistorische Forschung belegt, dass vergangene historische Begebenheiten einen großen Einfluss auf aktuelle wirtschaftliche und soziale Entwicklungen haben. Auf der Konferenz »The Long Shadow of History« kamen international renommierte Wissenschaftler am Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in München zusammen, um über die historische Persistenz wirtschaftlicher Prozesse zu diskutieren. Mit dieser Konferenz wurde der Grundstein für den Aufbau eines Netzwerkes von Wissenschaftlern gelegt, die auf diesem Gebiet forschen. In diesem Beitrag werden ein Einblick in dieses neue Forschungsfeld gegeben und die Forschungsprojekte, die auf der Konferenz vorgestellt wurden, zusammengefasst.

While gold objects have existed for thousands of years, gold's role in diversified portfolios is not well understood. We critically examine popular stories such as 'gold is an inflation hedge'. We show that gold may be an effective hedge if the investment horizon is measured in centuries. Over practical investment horizons, gold is an unreliable inflation hedge. We also explore valuation. The real price of gold is currently high compared to history. In the past, when the real price of gold was above average, subsequent real gold returns have been below average consistent with mean reversion. On the demand side, we focus on the official gold holdings of many countries. If prominent emerging markets increase their gold holdings to average per capita or per GDP holdings of developed countries, the real price of gold may rise even further from today's elevated levels. In the end, investors face a golden dilemma: 1) embrace a view that 'those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it' and the purchasing power of gold is likely to revert to its mean or 2) embrace a view that the emergence of new markets represent a structural change and 'this time is different'.

The theme of our research is related to the new type of relationship between financial audits (statutory) and unique regulation of financial markets in Romania.The Romanian authorities have decided as from 2013 regulation of financial markets, capital market, insurance market and private pensions market to achieve by a single entity, this situation will also lead to a number of challenges in the relationship between the auditor and the new regulatory regime. The main elements of our study are: the relationship between the audit committee and regulatory authority; quality of financial reporting for financial market entities. The auditor plays an important role in financial markets because it certifies the financial statements in accordance with European Union practice . It is also interesting to note potential interference that can occur in single regulation between compliance audit and financial stability and return on investment between performance audit and financial markets.In this case, financial regulation can coexist with compliance audit. EU legislation recommends that the auditor discuss with the audit committee the quality and acceptability of the financial reporting process.This recommendation is what should constitute a possible consensus to be highly unlikely between audit committees would align auditors in financial reporting disputes with management financial entities. In this regard, auditors should identify the factors we consider important in determining the quality of financial reporting. .We conducted this research in an effort to identify the possible divergence between the type of regulations that can emit single regulatory authority and the audit process. New regulator will operate on two levels, issue general regulations apply to all three categories of financial markets, capital market, insurance market and private pensions market, but in the same time and in greater extent will issue specific regulations of each market in part. We want to identify the extent to which audit the entities in these markets will be influenced by these changes. Interest is our largest to determine whether the audit can identify any changes in the new regulatory requirements on quality of financial statements.Our research results show the high importance of the audit committee in ensuring the high quality of financial reporting in the financial markets and seeks to identify potential points of conflict between audit conservatism and unique market regulation.

In countries with more secure property rights, the cost of capital is lower, suggesting higher investment rates. Using data from 49 countries we extend the conventional capital-asset pricing model (CAPM) to include a property rights risk-factor. In the conventional CAPM model only a single risk factor – systemic risk – is considered. However, when using a world market portfolio to estimate systemic risk in national portfolios, little of the required rate of return is explained in less developed as compared to more developed countries. Adding a factor representing institutional risk increases predictive power substantially. Further, we find that property rights affect the transmission of information, which suggests that markets price information differently, and allocate resources less efficiently, in countries with less secure property rights. We find that the CAPM model performs better in countries with more secure property rights.

The paper explores the financial accounts database of Eurostat, a rich set of data that is largely unexploited. It describes the main financial developments at EU level during the 1990-2010 period, both in terms of institutional agents and financial products. The paper provides evidence on the consequences of asset price inflation for wealth distribution between institutional agents and argues that the conceptual scheme of the ?double monetary circuit? of existing and recycled savings helps in describing and explaining the observed patterns of financialisation.

For the accounting year 2012 companies whose securities are listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange are required to present their individual financial statements in conformity with IFRS by restating the information prepared in compliance with national regulations. Moreover, starting 1st January 2013, these companies are applying IFRS as the basis of accounting. A peculiarity of this transition process is that listed entities were not required to present two sets of accounts before switching to IFRS (as it was the case for financial institutions). As we considered that the attitude of main stakeholders involved in the process is a precondition for high quality IFRS financial statements, the objective of our study was to illustrate the opinion of accounting professionals on this decision. The study surveys 142 accounting professionals who, throughout years 2012 and 2013, have attended the continuing training courses organized by the Body of Expert and Licensed Accountants of Romania. We identified that respondents are aware of the benefits of IFRS application, 79.6% of indicating that the companies listed on the BSE should have applied IFRS to the preparation of individual financial statements, even if they had not been required to do so. However, 69.7% of them believed that the application of IFRS should have been concurrent, in an initial stage, with the application of national regulations before proceeding with the application of IFRS as the basis of accounting. Furthermore, they perceive the fiscal risk as the greatest difficulty in the transition to IFRS. The most important benefit is the increased attractiveness to investors, while adapting the IT systems is considered the most significant cost. Overall, 63% of the respondents have indicated that the benefits of applying IFRS outweigh the costs.

In the context of Central and East-European stock exchanges, Romanian Stock Exchange, considered to be a frontier one, distinguishes itself through: reduced dimensions, undeveloped activity, both qualitative and quantitative, low stock exchange capitalization and transparency level as well as corporative governance level under the one of the main European markets. In an instable economic zone, such as Euro zone, investors prefer the developed financial markets, where powerful companies are listed with decent liquidity and high rate of capitalization which does not bring Romanian stock exchange market to our investor’s attention. But, frontier capital markets with a high growth potential offers international investors the possibility of portfolios diversification so that, when facing crisis situations, they are interested mostly in placing their capital in less developed markets. This paper mainly deals with the evolution of the main stock exchange indicators during 2007-2012 and, secondly, it pinpoints both the lacks of the domestic stock exchange market as well as the competitive advantages that the market offers to the current and potential investors.

This paper presents the main aspects regarding the new regulations applicable in the global finances. Triggered by the occurrence of the 2008 crisis, the regulatory framework reform induces significant modifications in the national legal provisions for the financial system.

We test the 'law matters' and 'legal origin' claims using a newly created panel dataset meas-uring legal change over time in a sample of developed and developing countries. Our dataset improves on previous ones by avoiding country-specific variables in favour of functional and generic descriptors, by taking into account a wider range of legal data, and by considering the effects of weighting variables in different ways, thereby ensuring greater consistency of cod-ing. Our analysis shows that legal origin explains part of the pattern of change in the adop-tion of shareholder protection measures over the period from the mid-1990s to the present day: in both developed and developing countries, common law systems were more protective of shareholder interests than civil law ones. We explain this the result on the basis of the head start common law systems had in adjusting to an emerging 'global' standard based mainly on Anglo-American practice. Our analysis also shows, however, that civil law origin was not much of an obstacle to convergence around this model, since civilian systems were catching up with their counterparts in the common law. We then investigate whether there was a link in this period between increased shareholder protection and stock market devel-opment, using a number of measures such as stock market capitalisation, the value of stock-trading and the number of listed firms, after controlling for legal origin, the state of economic development of particular countries, and their position on the World Bank rule of law index. We find no evidence of a long-run impact of legal change on stock market development. This finding is incompatible with the claim that legal origin affects the efficiency of legal rules and ultimately economic development. Possible explanations for our result are that laws have been overly protective of shareholders; transplanted laws have not worked as ex-pected; and, more generally, the exogenous legal origin effect is not as strong as widely sup-posed.

This paper investigates the impact of sovereign defaults on the ability of the corporate sector in emerging nations to finance itself abroad. The hypothesis here is that defaults have a negative spillover effect on the private sector through credit rationing. We explore a novel dataset covering the vast majority of corporates and municipals in emerging nations that received foreign capital between 1880 and 1913. The detailed nature of the data allows us to explore variation between countries and economic sectors. The results confirm that rationing existed, was very large, and persisted long beyond the solution of the original default problem. Therefore, the private sector in emerging countries paid a severe reputational cost for the debt intolerance of their governments, with possible implications for the growth prospects of these nations.

In the first quarter of the twentieth century, options began to be widely employed in the main financial centres in Europe and the USA for trading in spot and futures markets. From 1921 onward, Keynes embarked upon investment in these derivatives mainly—but not exclusively—in the commodity markets, showing a true fascination for this method of speculation. This type of financial investment he pursued mainly in the 1920s, with only a few operations undertaken during the 1930s. The option markets in which Keynes traded were metals—in particular copper, lead, spelter and, especially, tin. Besides metals, Keynes dealt in options also in other commodity markets, such as rubber and linseed oil, and sparingly in ordinary stocks and government securities. In this paper we offer a reconstruction of Keynes’s speculative activity in commodity options, drawing on the archival material kept in the Keynes Papers held at King’s College, Cambridge. This reconstruction is, to the best of our knowledge, entirely new to the literature and aims to provide an analysis of this particular aspect of Keynes’s investment behaviour, investigating his capacity to predict market trends and offering a preliminary assessment of his performance.

This paper is the outcome of a related broader project, exploring the explanatory power of the Legal Theory of Finance, which proposes a new institution-based analytical framework for the analysis of phenomena of financial markets. One of its most important theoretical assumptions, the legal construction of financial markets, is highlighted by the example of the private creation of money by structured finance products in this paper. Further implications can then be shown referring to pari passu clauses and collective action clauses, which are both exhibit a differential application of these legal rules according to the hierarchical status of the respective market participant, and can therefore endanger sovereign debt restructurings. Legal instruments to avoid this are briefly explored. An example of another key role of the law in crisis that is the task to resolve the tension between market discipline and financial stability is exemplified by the regulation of the OTC derivatives market and proposals of effective loss-sharing among CCPs. Related questions about the significance of legal rules to ensure financial stability are raised in the analysis of minimum capital requirements under Basel III.

One of the most often committed mistakes in economic reasoning is the supposition about the continuity of economic processes. However, what dominates in reality is a process of permanent changes, which sometimes proceed in a cascading manner rather than linearly. It must be acknowledged that the capitalist market economy by its very nature is involved in periodical crises. They must occur from time to time, yet the magnitude of the recent crisis is a result of inappropriate institutions and wrong macroeconomic policies based on neoliberalism. While the underlying causes of the crisis and the ways out of it at the era of interdependent global economy is discussed vividly in countless books and papers, yet it ought to be clear that the world is moving from one crisis to another. Thus, one must consider not only the economics of crisis, but also a kind of crisis of economics. There is a need for a New Pragmatism, based on the better understanding of economics as science, describing the economy as a system of forces and flows which contantly give feedback and influence each other.

Nowadays Corporate Governance is one of the most interesting and controversial matters of research and study. Undoubtedly, the economic developments of the last decade have made the need for detailed analysis about the processes of Governance and its impact on corporate choices even more fascinating and relevant. This should be done through an interdisciplinary approach, because in fact, the term Governance cannot and must not be exclusively linked to economic and company aspects only. Indeed, the present economic conditions demonstrate the large correlation between social, economic and political factors. Because of this interconnectedness, the importance of the Italian Credit Institutions is highlighted because of their active and decisive part in private and corporate choices. Over the centuries, Italian Savings Banks in particular have been a clear example of such interdependence amongst the public and the private. They were first simple Charity Institutions and then they evolved to play an increasingly important role amongst the Credit Institutions. Their quickness in spreading across the Italian territory and their need to take care of their own clients’ several necessities, induced the Banking Foundations to adopt a precise and rigorous Governance structure which we intend to analyse in this work. It is necessary, therefore, for a complete comprehension, to address the issues concerning the Credit and Savings Institutions’ regularity, current nature and goals. Here, it is also relevant to mention perhaps the most controversial issue about the Banking Foundations, that is, their dual public and private goals and, consequently, the different interests which follow.In conclusion, through this work, we want to give a framework in order to comprehend the Italian Institution of Savings Banks, and particularly, their metamorphosis into Foundations of Banking origin, their role and their particular importance for enterprises development.

This article is structured as follows: the first section is based on Reinhart and Rogoff’s seminal papers (Am Econ Rev 98(2):339–344, 2008a, b, Am Econ Rev 99(2):466–472, 2009a, This time is different: eight centuries of financial folly, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2009b, Am Econ Rev 100(2):573–578, 2010) and text book (2009), which today constitute the new cornerstones of conventional wisdom on the recurrence of financial crises throughout History, their development and aftermath. We deliver a critical view of this attempt to infer some systematic empirical relationship between debt, growth and inflation and underline the absence of core variables in this historical analysis. In Sect. 3, we go back 10 years to illustrate that conventional wisdom was much different at that time, emphasizing the peculiarity of each episode of the financial crises. This raises the issue of the relevancy of the cliometric approach to identify regularities down through History: so, should we trust cliometricians?

The direct reason for writing this study was to draw conclusions of the Great Depression for the present crisis that started in 2008 and which continues to the present day. My goal is to present international, primarily Anglo-saxon monographs and studies on the topic that apply methodologies and approaches hardly discussed – in this particular topic in my view – in Hungarian language literature. My conclusion, emphasised in reference to this specific historical event, is that even though financial-economic studies – accompanied by their very own sophisticated methodologies – are essential to understanding global crises, such as the crisis of 1919-1933, they are at the same time insufficient to do so. It is unavoidable to involve broader historical-political context in these studies as well as highly complex social psychological processes that are at the same time of crucial importance and orient the expectations of masses. This is closely related to recognising the limits of knowledge that shape and influence current economic policies.

The study assessed the effects of globalization on the performance of Nigerian banks. Primary and secondary data were used for the study. Random sampling technique was used in selecting 30% of marketers. A while purposive sampling was used to select two top management staff in the marketing departments at the headquarters of each bank and fifty customers each from the 25 banks. Primary data were obtained from two questionnaires administered to marketers and customers of the banks. Interviews were also conducted with top management staff in the marketing departments of the banks. Secondary data on variables such as profit before and after tax, deposits, assets, capital base, loans, interest rates, ownership structure, and number of branches of Foreign Banks in Nigeria, among others were collected from the banks. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. The results showed that globalization had significant and positive effects on the performance of banks. Higher profitability was a result of wider market coverage of banks in the country, both locally and internationally. The study concluded that globalization had no significant effect on market structure but greatly improved the performance of banks in Nigeria.

In Reinhart and Rogoff's economic history This Time is Different, the authors provide a panoramic view of crises from the Middle Ages to the modern era. Published just as the current global financial storm arrived, the book quickly showed how history could provide not just useful perspective but also, as we can now see, very prescient guidance in the aftermath. In the longer run, the book serves to inspire ongoing work in long-run macro-financial history. (JEL F30, G01, G20, N20)

We examine the board structures of US and Indian firms in two industries. We examine three aspects of board structures: board size, board independence, and board leadership. The two industries selected for analysis are information technology and capital goods. While Indian information technology firms have close ties to the American economy, capital goods firms have a domestic focus. Thus, we are able to analyze differences in board structures of firms in two countries and two industries, one of which is closely related and the other relatively unrelated. We do not find any significant differences in board size and board leadership for US and Indian firms in either industry. However, we find that US boards are more independent than Indian firms, both for information technology firms and capital goods firms. These findings are more supportive of the country effect than for the industry effect on board structures.

International financial services in their most basic conceivable forms have been provided, in one form or another, for at least two millennia. The growth of international finance as we know it (financial services, institutions and markets) has been shaped by history in response to requirements for capital specific to different times and different places. In early times, when there was no infrastructure, no central banking, and no financial regulation, merchants and bankers worked alone and had great difficulty in raising funds for their investments. They eventually diversified their sources of funds (to royalty, church, landed aristocracy and wealthy professionals) and began collaborating with partners in other locations. These early impulses resulted in incipient clusters of financial expertise that were later to evolve into what we call international financial centers (IFCs) nowadays.

L’histoire de l’innovation peut etre articulee en deux « eres » successives. L’ere de l’inventeur et l’ere du chercheur, qui se recouvrent cependant partiellement. Durant la premiere, ce que nous appelons aujourd’hui « recherche-developpement » etait plutot « reactive », l’inventeur cherchant a trouver des solutions aux problemes techniques qu’il rencontrait, ou cherchant a augmenter la vitesse d’execution des travaux, specialement dans l’industrie textile, ou a ameliorer le produit, dans l’acier, la vapeur et les chemins de fer. Durant la seconde ere, le chercheur est plus « pro-actif » cherchant et imaginant des produits nouveaux susceptibles d’augmenter regulierement le chiffre d’affaires. Le financement a evidemment change entre les deux eres. Durant la premiere ere, c’est l’epargne personnelle, l’epargne familiale ou l’aide d’amis qui finance le plus gros des recherches. Durant la seconde ere, meme si ces modes de financement n’ont pas disparu, c’est l’autofinancement des firmes, et, plus recemment, le « capital-risque » qui a domine. Bien que, ces dernieres decennies, la part des depenses de R&D dans le PIB soit tres correlee a l’effort prive de financement- les pays ou domine l’effort public sont moins « inventifs »-, on peut prevoir que l’effort public se developpe dans les prochaines decennies.Codes JEL : N20, O14, O31

Die Lehman-Insolvenz förderte die hohe Interdependenz und Ansteckungsgefahr im Bankensektor zu Tage. Die Vielzahl der gegenseitigen Kredit- und Anleihegeschäfte macht insbesondere die Insolvenz einer Großbank zum unkalkulierbaren Risiko. Um dieser Geiselhaft zu entkommen, wollen Aufsicht und Politik seit längerem das fremdfinanzierte Wachstum der Banken begrenzen. Dieses Bemühen steht beispielsweise auch hinter der neu eingeführten Leverage Ratio im Baseler Regelwerk (Basel III). Das DIW Berlin hat für Deutschland, Großbritannien und die USA untersucht, ob dies bisher gelungen ist. Dabei zeigt sich: In den Jahren vor der Finanzkrise haben die Bankbilanzen in allen drei Ländern sehr viel schneller zugelegt als das Bruttoinlandsprodukt. Im Wesentlichen wurde das exzessive Bilanzwachstum durch Fremdkapital finanziert. Die Maßnahmen im Zuge der Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise haben das Wachstum der Bankbilanzen nur kurzfristig gebändigt. Auch die neuen Eigenkapitalvorschriften (Basel III) sind voraussichtlich nicht in der Lage, das Bilanzwachstum einzudämmen.

The increase in the concentration of the banking industry across European Union countries during the last fifteen years can be explained in terms of: a) global factors, like the comprehensive adoption of technological innovations, the intensification of competition that has resulted from the deregulation of the financial sector and, more recently, as a consequence of the government interventions and forced acquisitions prompted by the 2007-2009 financial crisis; and, b) factors that have been specific to the E.U., in particular, the structural changes that took place in the region as a result of the creation of the Single Financial Market (1993) and the introduction of the euro (1999). This work analyzes the concentration process of the banking industry in the E.U. during the last fifteen years giving preeminence to the strategic choices made by the region?s commercial banks. It also reports the most visible E.U. banks? M&As and government interventions that resulted from the 2007-2009 financial crisis, make a preliminary evaluation of the outcomes, and suggests possible future trends for the banking industry in the region.

This paper investigates the empirical link between fiscal vulnerabilities and currency crashes in advanced economies over the last 130 years, building on a new dataset of real effective exchange rates and fiscal balances for 21 countries since 1880. We find evidence that crashes depend more on prospective fiscal deficits than on actual ones, and more on the composition of public debt (i.e. rollover/sudden stop risk) than on its level per se. We also uncover significant nonlinear effects at high levels of public debt as well as significantly negative risk premia for major reserve currencies, which enjoy a lower probability of currency crash than other currencies ceteris paribus. Yet, our estimates indicate that such premia remain small in size relative to the conditional probability of a currency crash if prospective fiscal deficits or rollover/sudden stop risk are high. This suggests that a currency’s international status is not necessarily sufficient to shelter it from collapse.

Eine angemessene Eigenkapitalausstattung der Großbanken ist die wichtigste Voraussetzung für die Bildung von Vertrauen in die Stabilität des Bankensektors. Die risikogewichtete Eigenkapitalquote (Equity Ratio) ist mit zahlreichen Problemen behaftet und daher als Indikator für die Widerstandskraft einer Bank nur sehr bedingt geeignet. Eine bessere, risikounabhängige Kennziffer stellt die Leverage Ratio dar. Sie schafft Vergleichbarkeit zwischen Realwirtschaft und Finanzwirtschaft beim Risikomaß Eigenkapitalquote und erhöht damit die Transparenz in Bezug auf die Risikoposition einer Bank. Für ihre Berechnung sind weder aufwendige interne Risikogewichtungsmodelle notwendig, noch benötigt man das Urteil von externen Rating-Agenturen. Die Leverage Ratio diskriminiert nicht zwischen unterschiedlichen Anlageformen, also auch nicht zwischen Unternehmenskrediten und Staatsanleihekäufen. Zudem bremst sie das Bilanzwachstum und leistet dadurch einen Beitrag zur Eingrenzung des "too big to fail"-Problems.

Banks and Industry in France and Britain from the 1880s to the Second World War. Most of the comparative studies about the relationships between banking and industry on the long term have been focused on the comparison between Britain and Germany. The discussion concerning the relative efficiency of each financial system vis-à-vis the growth of industry in those countries has often been stated and is relatively well known. To propose another comparison could enlarge the problematic. I propose here a comparative study about the relationships between banking and industry in France and in Britain from the last third of the nineteenth century until World War 2. The reasons of this choice are the following. Firstly the two countries are the first that began to develop industrialization. Secondly, during that long period, their financial systems have known some important alterations. Finally, in going away from a comparison Britain/Germany, often based on a frontal opposition between market-based and bank-based financial systems, I hope to help to lead to a more comprehensive and nuanced appreciation of the realities of the financing of industry and of its problems. Classification JEL : N20, N23., La plupart des études comparatives des rapports entre les banques et l’industrie sur le long terme se sont centrées sur la comparaison entre l’Angleterre et l’Allemagne. La discussion sur l’efficacité relative des systèmes financiers pour la croissance de l’industrie dans ces deux pays a été souvent exposée et est relativement bien documentée. Faire intervenir une autre comparaison peut permettre d’enrichir la problématique. Nous proposons ici une étude comparative sur les relations entre banques et industrie en France et en Angleterre depuis le dernier tiers du XIXe siècle jusqu’à la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Les raisons de ce choix résident dans le fait qu’il s’agit des deux premières puissances à avoir développé leur industrie, ainsi que dans l’existence d’importantes modifications de leurs systèmes financiers dans le temps. Enfin, en s’écartant d’une comparaison Angleterre/ Allemagne souvent basée sur une opposition frontale entre systèmes fondés sur les marchés et systèmes fondés sur les banques, on espère amener à une vision plus nuancée des réalités du financement industriel et de ses problèmes. Classification JEL : N20, N23., Straus André. Banques et industrie en France et en Angleterre : des années 1880 à la Seconde Guerre mondiale. In: Revue d'économie financière, n°104, 2011. Les relations capital et industrie - Capital humain et finance. pp. 35-49.

In this paper, the author presents the concept of financial control, distinguishing between financial supervision and tax control based on the analysis of relations finance - Public finance - taxation, namely, financial law - tax law.

In recent years, a number of regulators have launched proposals to expand the obligation to disclose major share ownership in listed companies. This article shows that these are not stand-alone developments. Using a unique dataset comprising data from 25 countries over 11 years (1995-2005), collected by the Centre for Business Research at the University of Cambridge, we empirically study the evolution of ownership disclosure rules across countries. The analysis demonstrates that these rules have become more stringent over time, in the sense that disclosure thresholds have been lowered, and that there has been convergence. A breakdown of the results suggests that the degree of countries' economic development is a relevant factor in explaining the differences between countries. The analysis also suggests a positive correlation between ownership disclosure and other variables that protect minority shareholders, as well as a positive correlation between the stringency of countries' ownership disclosure rules and the degree of dispersed ownership. In the article, we offer various possible explanations for these results. Looking to the future, while it appears unlikely that disclosure thresholds will be lowered much further, ownership disclosure rules can be expected to continue to evolve in other dimensions. Regulators are likely to broaden the definition of the stake that triggers disclosure, so as to ensure that the ultimate owner is reached. In addition, regulators may require more information be disclosed when the notification is made, so as to enable other investors and issuers to adequately assess the implications of major share ownership.

Where does international capital flow? Robert E. Lucas Jr. (1990) asked why capital did not flow from rich countries to poor, implicitly assuming that returns to capital in developing countries were higher than those in the devel oped world. Ohanian and Wright (2008) measured rates of return over the last 50 years to assess whether capital indeed flowed from low return countries to high return countries. We found that capital flows for much of the postWorld War II period are the reverse of the flows predicted by theory. That is, capital has tended to flow to countries with relatively low returns, rather than high returns. This paper analyzes where capital flowed dur ing the “golden era” of international flows from 1880–1913, when capital mobility is considered to have been quite high, and during the interwar period from 1918–1938, when capital flows were increasingly restricted following the First World War and the Great Depression. Following the methodology of our earlier paper, we construct two measures of the level of returns in a country and compare these returns to observed capital flows. The first measure, based on the marginal product of capital, is constructed using a CobbDouglas technology and measured from the observed capital-output ratio. The second measure is based on observed consumption growth, which is the return to capital when consumers have log preferences over consumption, and which otherwise is a good proxy for the return

Theoretical models have suggested that sanctions may be important for enforcing sovereign debt contracts (Bulow and Rogoff, 1989a, 1989b). This paper examines the role of sanctions in promoting debt repayment during the classical gold standard period. We analyze a wide range of sanctions including gunboat diplomacy, external fiscal control over a country's finances, asset seizures by private creditors, and trade sanctions. We find that "supersanctions," instances where military pressure or political control were applied in response to default, were an important and commonly used enforcement mechanism from 1870-1913. Following the implementation of supersanctions, on average, ex ante default probabilities on new debt issues fell by more than 60 percent, yield spreads declined approximately 800 basis points, and defaulting countries experienced almost a 100 percent reduction of time spent in default. We also find that debt defaulters that surrendered their fiscal sovereignty for an extended period of time were able to issue large amounts of new debt on international capital markets. Consistent with policies advocated by Caballero and Dornbusch (2002) for Argentina, our results suggest that third-party enforcement mechanisms, with the authority to enact financial and fiscal reforms, may be beneficial for resuscitating the capital market reputation of sovereign defaulters.

This paper examines government policies aimed at rescuing banks from the effects of the great financial crisis of 2007-2009. To delimit the scope of the analysis, we concentrate on the fiscal side of interventions and ignore, by design, the monetary policy reaction to the crisis. The policy response to the subprime crisis started in earnest after Lehman’s failure in mid September 2008, accelerated after February 2009, and has become very large by September 2009. Governments have relied on a portfolio of intervention tools, but the biggest commitments and outlays have been in the form of debt and asset guarantees, while purchases of bad assets have been very limited. We employ event study methodology to estimate the benefits of government interventions on banks and their shareholders. Announcements directed at the banking system as a whole (general) and at specific banks (specific) were priced by the markets as cumulative abnormal rates of return over the selected window periods. General announcements tend to be associated with positive cumulative abnormal returns and specific announcements with negative ones. General announcements exert cross-area spillovers but are perceived by the home-country banks as subsidies boosting the competitive advantage of foreign banks. Specific announcements exert spillovers on other banks. Our results are also sensitive to the information environment. Specific announcements tend to exert a positive impact on rates of return in the pre-crisis sub-period, when announcements are few and markets have relative confidence in the “normal” information flow. The opposite takes place in the turbulent crisis sub-period when announcements are the order of the day and markets mistrust the “normal” information flow. These results appear consistent with the observed reluctance of individual institutions to come forth with requests for public assistance. JEL Codes: G01, G21, N20, PSL Quarterly Review, V. 63, N. 254 (2010)

The article is part of the special issue of the journal on Charles P. Kindleberger (CPK). It is here reported one of CPK's best known articles published in the old series of Moneta e Credito (vol. 38 n. 152, december 1985, pp. 355-69). The article reconstructs the recent history of the dollar and draws some implications on the dollarÕs prospective trends. Read today, the article testifies of Kindleberger's refined analytical skills and of his ability to use history for making sensible predictions.

This article summarises the findings of qualitative, in-depth interviews which aimed to explore the motivating factors behind domestic cash usage that generate the significantly higher cash volumes in Hungary than would ’normally’ be justified. In the opinion of the experts interviewed, cash usage may be facilitated by the intensive cash need of the hidden economy, the traditional cash-oriented behaviour of the public administration and a lack of trust in business-to-business transactions. This analysis primarily intends to capture certain trends, which may have temporarily changed in the wake of the economic crisis, but nevertheless span a number of years and the specific phenomena of which may be regarded as generally valid over the long term, apart from certain periodic effects.

In the present article the authors are debating the historical evolution of finance from its beggining untill its present. The importance of the theme is given by the fact that the appearence of finance was due to the appearence of the state, when the state treasury was confused with the welfare of the Lord, and when taxes are introduced for the first time.

The article is an introduction to the new issue of the Journal. It provides an overview of the current economic and financial situation and summarises the main topics dealt with by the following articles. The financial crisis continues to unfold, taking new turns. By now, it is clear that bank bailouts have a heavy cost for the public purse. This adds to the usual increase in public deficits in periods of economic crisis. Financial markets price these difficulties in terms of wider spreads between bills and bonds of such countries compared to “safe” countries such as Germany. In turn, this increases the cost of public debt and risks igniting an unsustainable downward spiral. Recourse to heavy cuts in public expenditure is called forth by some powerful European governments and by the remnants of the Washington consensus; however, under the pressure of financial markets even those who are not convinced by the validity of this policy strategy have to give in. Thus, the costs of banking bailouts are shifted onto social expenditure, while the general retrenchment of the public sector aggravates the economic crisis. JEL Codes: G01, G21, N20, PSL Quarterly Review, V. 63, N. 255 (2010)