International Finance

This work offers ways of analysing the key issues in international finance and open economy macroeconomics. It discusses the evolution of international finance from gold standard to the end of the millennium.

The international monetary system has changed radically in the last twenty years. Capital, information, goods, and services move around the globe with unprecedented ease. Countries from the former communist bloc have joined the system. Europe is on the verge of monetary union. Financial crises in East Asia and Mexico have rocked the world economy. In this book, Robert Solomon--author of the definitive history of the monetary order between 1945 and 1981--presents the first comprehensive history of these and other aspects of this revolution in international finance. Authoritative, accessible, and elegantly written, the book will be indispensable for anyone who wishes to understand how today's international monetary system works.Solomon begins with the spectacular rise and subsequent decline of the foreign exchange value of the U.S. dollar in the 1980s. He covers the debt crisis of developing countries in the 1980s. He explores the shift from central planning to market economies in many countries in the 1990s and explains the origins, implications, and problems of the move to a single European currency. Solomon examines in detail the striking increase in the mobility of capital--paying particular attention to the costs and benefits for developing countries, and to the role of capital mobility in the Mexican crisis of 1994 and the Asian crisis that began in 1997. In the book's final chapter, Solomon provides an overview of the international monetary system and considers how it might evolve in the future. In this section, he focuses on the key subjects of balance-of-payments adjustments, supply of reserves, and stability. He also evaluates a variety of much-debated policy instruments, including inflation targeting, currency boards, target zones for exchange rates, free-floating exchange rates, the Tobin tax, macroeconomic policy coordination, and special drawings rights.Throughout, Solomon relates developments in the international monetary system to macroeconomic conditions in the countries involved--arguing that it is impossible to understand one without understanding the other. As a clear, thorough, and unusually perceptive account of global finance and monetary economics in the late twentieth century, Money on the Move will be vital reading for economists, policymakers, and general readers.

Lauded by the New York Times as "brilliant and persuasive", and published in more than thirty-five foreign editions, George Soros's The Crisis of Global Capitalism became an instant classic. A must read for anyone concerned with the complex market forces that rule our global economy and that have thrust us into a state of financial flux and international economic insecurity.

Now Soros takes a whole new look at the arguments he made in that book, incorporating the very latest in global economic and political developments. He shows how the recovery following the economic meltdown of 1998 may have been a false dawn, leaving us in a much more precarious position than we realize. He also explores surprising connections between events like the war in Kosovo and the economic wealth of nations. And he offers new insights into the fates of Russia, Asia, Europe and the United States.

Demonstrating that our still unquestioning faith in market forces blinds us to crucial economic instabilities, Open Society provides an inspiring vision of how to fix the flaws in the system - suggestions that have already influenced leaders at the IMF, the World Bank, and in many national governments.

To help global managers and international business scholars understand the multiple influences of globalization and digital technology on global financial management, Carrada-Bravo has dispensed with traditional distinctions between corporate and global finance in order to bring a much-needed coherence to the practice and study of global finance. Throughout this well-structured and highly practical volume, he emphasizes the delivery of business experiences associated with the financial interaction between entities of two or more regions of the world via the Internet or other form of electronic communication.

The global economy is undergoing dramatic financial changes. The removal of technical, trade, and monetary barriers and the liberalization of world economies create challenges and opportunities for investment and financial transactions. With these changes, international finance is expected to play a vital role in foreign exchange, cross-border capital flows, joint ventures, and economic growth, but rapid progress in telecommunications and electronic capital transfers could lead to tremors in financial markets, making the global economy vulnerable to speculation, investors'panic, and economic fluctuations. Supported by the latest empirical research, this book weaves together a theoretical framework of international finance.

It focuses clearly and simply on the underlying economics of exchange rate dtermination and balance of payments. In Part I the author presents basic concepts within historical perspectives of the US and Global Economy. Part II intriduces a basic analytical model - usable with fixed and floating exchange rates, in which capital mobility is complete, real exchange rates are variable, and investment spending is endogenous. Variants of the model are used for short and long-run comparative static analysis. In addition, there is a relatively long chapter devoted to dynamic analysis with rational expectations. Part III contains three chapters on policy, including a full chapter on the European Moneatry System.

Lauded by the New York Times as "brilliant and persuasive", and published in more than thirty-five foreign editions, George Soros's The Crisis of Global Capitalism became an instant classic. A must read for anyone concerned with the complex market forces that rule our global economy and that have thrust us into a state of financial flux and international economic insecurity.

Now Soros takes a whole new look at the arguments he made in that book, incorporating the very latest in global economic and political developments. He shows how the recovery following the economic meltdown of 1998 may have been a false dawn, leaving us in a much more precarious position than we realize. He also explores surprising connections between events like the war in Kosovo and the economic wealth of nations. And he offers new insights into the fates of Russia, Asia, Europe and the United States.

Demonstrating that our still unquestioning faith in market forces blinds us to crucial economic instabilities, Open Society provides an inspiring vision of how to fix the flaws in the system - suggestions that have already influenced leaders at the IMF, the World Bank, and in many national governments.

World Financial Orders challenges the predominance of neo-liberalism as a mode of knowledge about contemporary world finance, and claims that it neglects the social and political bases as well as the malign consequences of change. He looks to the field of International Political Economy (IPE) to construct an alternative mode, one that critically restores society and politics. An 'historical' approach to IPE is advanced that accounts for modern world finance since the seventeenth century as a succession of structurally distinct hierarchical social orders. This book will be of interest to those working in the field of IPE and to those scholars, researchers and students from across the social sciences who seek to challenge the common-sense, neo-liberal explanation of contemporary world finance.

This book examines the U.S. international trade finance system, including the banks that finance trade; the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which guarantees and insures those trade credits; the Foreign Credit Insurance Association, which insures trade credits; the Public Export Funding Corporation, which makes loans to foreign buyers of U.S. exports; and the federal, state, and local agencies and private institutions that facilitate U.S. trade. Major foreign export credit agencies are discussed and compared with the American system, which is the most comprehensive in the world in its facilitation of financing U.S. export trade.

Gianturco examines the roles played by export credit agencies (ECAs) which are specialized financial institutions that cover some $1 trillion of exports each year. ECAs provide loans, guarantees, insurance, and other financial services to their particular nation's exporters and foreign direct investors. In terms of their financial impact on international trade, these agencies are unsurpassed, but rarely do they receive attention in the financial press or broader recognition. Gianturco discusses the functions ECAs play in international business and economic development.

This collection of essays proposes improvements to the international financial system and evaluates the prospects that the recent conversion to global capitalism will be sustained.

This book presents a radically different argument for what has caused, and likely will continue to cause, the collapse of emerging market economies. Pettis combines the insights of economic history, economic theory, and finance theory into a comprehensive model for understanding sovereign liability management and the causes of financial crises. He examines recent financial crises in emerging market countries along with the history of international lending since the 1820s to arguethat the process of international lending is driven primarily by external events and not by local politics and/or economic policies. He draws out the corporate finance implications of this approach to argue that most of the current analyses of the recent financial crises suffered by Latin America,Asia, and Russia have largely missed the point. He then develops a sovereign finance model, analogous to corporate finance, to understand the capital structure needs of emerging market countries. Using this model, he finally puts into perspective the recent crises, a new sovereign liability management theory, the implications of the model for sovereign debt restructurings, and the new financial architecture.Bridging the gap between finance specialists and traders, on the one hand, and economists and policy-makers on the other, The Volatility Machine is critical reading for anyone interested in where the international economy is going over the next several years.