Studying the interaction of the economy with its environment, this essay shows the 'market solution' to environmental problems generates increasing uncertainty.
Many questions have been raised about America's status in the increasingly interconnected global economy. Yet key factsâ€"such as the amount of foreign assets abroad owned by U.S. citizensâ€"are not known. The crucial data needed to assess the U.S. position are unavailable. This volume explores significant shortcomings in U.S. data on international capital transactions and their implications for policymakers. The volume offers clearcut recommendations for U.S. agencies to bring data collection and analyses of the global economy into the twenty-first century. The volume explores: How factors emerging since the early 1980s have shaped world financial markets and revealed shortcomings in data collection and analysis. How the existing U.S. data system works and where it fails how measurements of international financial transactions are recorded; and how swaps, options, and futures present special reporting problems. How alternative methods, such as collecting data, from sources such as global custodians and international clearinghouses, might improve coverage and accuracy.
Economic Freedom and Interventionism is both a primer of the fundamental thought of Ludwig von Mises and an anthology of the writings of perhaps the best-known exponent of what is now known as the Austrian School of economics. This volume contains forty-seven articles edited by Mises scholar Bettina Bien Greaves. Among them are Mises's expositions of the role of government, his discussion of inequality of wealth, inflation, socialism, welfare, and economic education, as well as his exploration of the "deeper" significance of economics as it affects seemingly noneconomic relations between human beings. These papers are valuable reading for students of economic freedom and the science of human action. Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of economics throughout most of the twentieth century. Bettina Bien Greaves is a former resident scholar and trustee of the Foundation for Economic Education and was a senior staff member at FEE from 1951 to 1999.
Since 2008, when Fixing Global Finance was first published, the collapse of the housing and credit bubbles of the 2000s has crippled the world’s economy. In this updated edition, Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf explains how global imbalances helped cause the financial crises now ravaging the U.S. economy and outlines steps for ending this destructive cycle—of which this is the latest and biggest. An expanded conclusion recommends near- and long-term measures to stabilize and protect financial markets in the future. Reviewing global financial crises since 1980, Wolf lays bare the links between the microeconomics of finance and the macroeconomics of the balance of payments, demonstrating how the subprime lending crisis in the United States fits into a pattern that includes the economic shocks of 1997, 1998, and early 1999 in Latin America, Russia, and Asia. He explains why the United States became the “borrower and spender of last resort,” makes the case that this was an untenable arrangement, and argues that global economic security depends on radical reforms in the international monetary system and the ability of emerging economies to borrow sustainably in domestic currencies. Sharply and clearly argued, Wolf’s prescription for fixing global finance illustrates why he has been described as "the world's preeminent financial journalist."
Collectively, mankind has never had it so good despite periodic economic crises of which the current sub-prime crisis is merely the latest example. Much of this success is attributable to the increasing efficiency of the world's financial institutions as finance has proved to be one of the most important causal factors in economic performance. In a series of insightful essays, financial and economic historians examine how financial innovations from the seventeenth century to the present have continually challenged established institutional arrangements, forcing change and adaptation by governments, financial intermediaries, and financial markets. Where these have been successful, wealth creation and growth have followed. When they failed, growth slowed and sometimes economic decline has followed. These essays illustrate the difficulties of co-ordinating financial innovations in order to sustain their benefits for the wider economy, a theme that will be of interest to policy makers as well as economic historians.
This book adds to the resolution of two problems in finance and economics: i) what is macro-financial uncertainty? : How to measure it? How is it different from risk? How important is it for the financial markets? And ii) what sort of asymmetries underlie financial risk and uncertainty propagation across the global financial markets? That is, how risk and uncertainty change according to factors such as market states or market participants. In Chapter 2, which is entitled “Momentum Uncertainties”, the relationship between macroeconomic uncertainty and the abnormal returns of a momentum trading strategy in the stock market is studies. We show that high levels of uncertainty in the economy impact negatively and significantly the returns of a portfolio of stocks that consist of buying past winners and selling past losers. High uncertainty reduces below zero the abnormal returns of momentum, extinguishes the Sharpe ratio of the momentum strategy, while increases the probability of momentum crashes both by increasing the skewness and the kurtosis of the momentum return distribution. Uncertainty acts as an economic regime that underlies abrupt changes over time of the returns generated by momentum strategies. In Chapter 3, “Measuring Uncertainty in the Stock Market”, a new index for measuring stock market uncertainty on a daily basis is proposed. The index considers the inherent differentiation between uncertainty and the common variations between the series. The second contribution of chapter 3 is to show how this financial uncertainty index can also serve as an indicator of macroeconomic uncertainty. Finally, the dynamic relationship between uncertainty and the series of consumption, interest rates, production and stock market prices, among others, is analized. In chapter 4: “Uncertainty, Systemic Shocks and the Global Banking Sector: Has the Crisis Modified their Relationship?” we explore the stability of systemic risk and uncertainty propagation among financial institutions in the global economy, and show that it has remained stable over the last decade. Additionally, a new simple tool for measuring the resilience of financial institutions to these systemic shocks is provided. We examine the characteristics and stability of systemic risk and uncertainty, in relation to the dynamics of the banking sector stock returns. This sort of evidence is supportive of past claims, made in the field of macroeconomics, which hold that during the global financial crisis the financial system may have faced stronger versions of traditional shocks rather than a new type of shock. In chapter 5, “Currency downside risk, liquidity, and financial stability”, downside risk propagation across global currency markets and the ways in which it is related to liquidity is analyzed. Two primary contributions to the literature follow. First, tail-spillovers between currencies in the global FX market are estimated. This index is easy to build and does not require intraday data, which constitutes an important advantage. Second, we show that turnover is related to risk spillovers in global currency markets. Chapter 6 is entitled “Spillovers from the United States to Latin American and G7 Stock Markets: A VAR-Quantile Analysis”. This chapter contributes to the studies of contagion, market integration and cross-border spillovers during both regular and crisis episodes by carrying out a multivariate quantile analysis. It focuses on Latin American stock markets, which have been characterized by a highly positive dynamic in recent decades, in terms of market capitalization and liquidity ratios, after a far-reaching process of market liberalization and reforms to pension funds across the continent during the 80s and 90s. We document smaller dependences between the LA markets and the US market than those between the US and the developed economies, especially in the highest and lowest quantiles.
This Handbook presents in-depth research conducted on a myriad of issues within the field of financial literacy. Split into six sections, it starts by presenting prevalent conceptions of financial literacy before covering financial literacy in the policy context, the state and development of financial literacy within different countries, issues of assessment and evaluation of financial literacy, approaches to teaching financial literacy, and teacher training and teacher education in financial literacy. In doing so, it provides precise definitions of the construct of financial literacy and elaborates on the state and recent developments of financial literacy around the world, to show ways of measuring and fostering financial literacy and to give hints towards necessary and successful teacher trainings. The book also embraces the diversity in the field by revealing contrasting and conflicting views that cannot be bridged, while at the same time making a contribution by re-joining existing materials in one volume which can be used in academic discourse, in research-workshops, in university lectures and in the definition of program initiatives within the wider field of financial literacy. It allows for a landscape of financial literacy to be depicted which would foster the implementation of learning opportunities for human beings for sake of well-being within financial living-conditions. The Handbook is useful to academics and students of the topic, professionals in the sector of investment and banking, and for every person responsible for managing his or her financial affairs in everyday life.