Discusses the technological change and financial innovation that commercial banking has experienced during the past 25 years. Describes the role of the financial system in economies and how technological change and financial innovation can improve social welfare. Surveys the literature relating to several specific financial innovations, which are new products or services, production processes, or organizational forms. The past quarter century has been a period of substantial change in terms of banking products, services, and production technologies. Moreover, while much effort has been devoted to understanding the characteristics of users and adopters of financial innovations, we still know little about how and why financial innovations are initially developed.
The international debt problem has already generated a huge number of publications. Why then another publication? Many publications address macroeconomic implications of the debt problem, others investigate special new financing instruments such as debt equity swaps, others discuss the economic or legal aspects of debt reschedulings. This work of Walter Berger concentrates on the evolution of the financial side of the debt problem. This evolution is fascinating since it reveals a continuous expansion of the financial instruments being used and a surprising change in intercreditor relationships. While in the seventies equal treatment of creditors was not of much concern, this changed dramatically in the eighties. But lately equal treatment turned out to be a strong impediment to the creditors' management of loan portfolios. Hence, inequality of treatment is growing again. This development represents a challenge to everyone who tries to explain legal changes by using economic theory. Another characteristic of Walter Berger's work is that he starts from a broad institutional perspective. Most economists analyze the debt problem by assuming a world where everybody follows the same principles of rationality and optimization. Walter Berger questions this approach by arguing that cultural discrepancies among creditor countries and indebted countries make it difficult to define efficiency by "Western" standards only. Moreover, different cultures create what Berger calls "institutional obfuscation", that is, creditors have substantial difficulties to predict the behavior of differently minded debtors, and vice versa. This lack of information creates a transaction risk for each contracting party.
The global economy has experienced four waves of rapid debt accumulation over the past 50 years. The first three debt waves ended with financial crises in many emerging market and developing economies. During the current wave, which started in 2010, the increase in debt in these economies has already been larger, faster, and broader-based than in the previous three waves. Current low interest rates mitigate some of the risks associated with high debt. However, emerging market and developing economies are also confronted by weak growth prospects, mounting vulnerabilities, and elevated global risks. A menu of policy options is available to reduce the likelihood that the current debt wave will end in crisis and, if crises do take place, will alleviate their impact.
This edition of the OECD Sovereign Borrowing Outlook reviews developments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic for government borrowing needs, funding conditions and funding strategies in the OECD area.
Understanding Financial Accounts seeks to show how a range of questions on financial developments can be answered with the framework of financial accounts and balance sheets, by providing non-technical explanations illustrated with practical examples.
The first two decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed an influx of innovations and reforms in public financial management. The current wave of reforms is markedly different from those in the past, owing to the sheer number of innovations, their widespread adoption, and the sense that they add up to a fundamental change in the way governments manage public money. This book takes stock of the most important innovations that have emerged over the past two decades, including fiscal responsibility legislation, fiscal rules, medium-term budget frameworks, fiscal councils, fiscal risk management techniques, performance budgeting, and accrual reporting and accounting. Not merely a handbook or manual describing practices in the field, the volume instead poses critical questions about innovations; the issues and challenges that have appeared along the way, including those associated with the global economic crisis; and how the ground can be prepared for the next generation of public financial management reforms. Watch Video of Book Launch
Developing countries need additional, cross-border capital channeled into their private sectors to generate employment and growth, reduce poverty, and meet the other Millennium Development Goals. Innovative financing mechanisms are necessary to make this happen. 'Innovative Financing for Development' is the first book on this subject that uses a market-based approach. It compiles pioneering methods of raising development finance including securitization of future flow receivables, diaspora bonds, and GDP-indexed bonds. It also highlights the role of shadow sovereign ratings in facilitating access to international capital markets. It argues that poor countries, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa, can potentially raise tens of billions of dollars annually through these instruments. The chapters in the book focus on the structures of the various innovative financing mechanisms, their track records and potential for tapping international capital markets, the constraints limiting their use, and policy measures that governments and international institutions can implement to alleviate these constraints.
This book offers comprehensive examination of research on the relevance of individual behavior and technology to financial innovations. The chapters cover current topics in finance including integrated reporting, people finance, crowdfunding, and corporate networks. It provides readers with an organized starting point to explore individual behaviors and new technologies used in financial innovations. The explicit and growing speed of the spread of new technologies has hastened the emergence of innovation in the field of finance. Topics like the Internet of Things, semantic computing and big data finance are motivating the construction of financial tools that translate into new financial mechanisms. This book strives help readers better understand the dynamic of the changes in financial systems and the proliferation of financial products. Individual Behaviors and Technologies for Financial Innovations is organized in 16 chapters, organized in three parts. Part I has eight chapters that review the research on gender differences in attitudes about risk and propensity to purchase automobile insurance, financial literacy models for college students, wellness and attitude of university students in the use of credit cards, impact of programs income distribution and propensity to remain in employment, financial literacy and propensity to resort to informal financing channels, risk behavior in the use of credit cards by students. Part II reviews the research on financing for startups and SMEs, exploring funding through crowdfunding platform, operating credit unions, and using networks of friends to finance small businesses outside the domestic market. The four chapters of Part III describe contexts of financial innovation in listed companies, including society's demands on their behavior - we discuss motivations for companies to participate in corporate sustainability indexes, corporate performance through their profile of socially responsible investments, influence of networks of social relations in the formation of boards, and management of companies, and also the precariousness of financial decisions in large companies, as well as the role of the internet in corporate communication with the market.
