Currency boards, more so than other exchange rate regimes, have come in and out of fashion. Defined by a fixed exchange rate with full convertibility, central bank liabilities backed with foreign exchange reserves, and a high cost of exiting the regime, currency boards were common in colonial times—until most were cast off as countries gained independence after World War II.
The multinational firm and its main vehicle, foreign direct investment, are key forces in economic globalization. Their importance to the world economy can be seen in the fact that since 1990 foreign direct investment has grown more rapidly than the world GDP and world trade. Despite this, the causes and consequences of multinational firm activity are little understood and until recently relatively unexamined in the theoretical literature.
Over the last thirty years, a new paradigm in banking theory has overturned economists' traditional vision of the banking sector. The asymmetric information model, extremely powerful in many areas of economic theory, has proven useful in banking theory both for explaining the role of banks in the economy and for pointing out structural weaknesses in the banking sector that may justify government intervention.
Too often, finance courses stop short of making a connection between textbook finance and the problems of real-world business. Financial Modeling bridges this gap between theory and practice by providing a nuts-and-bolts guide to solving common financial models with spreadsheets. Simon Benninga takes the reader step by step through each model, showing how it can be solved using Microsoft Excel.
The increasingly integrated economies of East Asia—China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand—face the dilemma of how to achieve exchange-rate security in the absence of a unifying "Asian euro." The US dollar has become the region's dominant intraregional trading currency as well as the monetary anchor to which East Asian economies informally peg their currencies.
In The Venture Capital Cycle, Paul Gompers and Josh Lerner correct widespread misperceptions about the nature and role of the venture capitalist and provide an accessible and comprehensive overview of the venture capital industry. Bringing together fifteen years of ground-breaking research into the form and function of venture capital firms, they examine the fund-raising, investing, and exit stages of venture capitalists.
Historically, the fields of exchange-rate economics and microstructure finance have progressed independently of each other. Recent interaction, however, has given rise to a microstructure approach to exchange rates. This book focuses on the economics of financial information and how microstructure tools help to clarify the types of information most relevant to exchange rates.
This text, intended for both graduate students and professional researchers, is an effective, concise introduction to the structural econometrics of auctions. Tools from recent developments in theoretical econometrics are combined with established numerical methods to provide a practical guide to most of the main concepts in the empirical analysis of field data from auctions. Among other things, the text is remarkable for a large number of mathematical problems and computer exercises for which sample solutions are provided at the end of the book.
The volatility that has hit many middle-income countries (MICs) after liberalizing their financial markets has prompted critics to call for new policies to stabilize these boom-bust cycles. But, as Aaron Tornell and Frank Westermann point out in this book, over the last two decades most of the developing countries that have experienced lending booms and busts have also exhibited the fastest growth among MICs. Countries with more stable credit growth, by contrast, have exhibited, on average, lower growth rates.
This NBER series presents current academic research findings in the areas of taxation and government spending. The papers included provide important background information for policy analysts in government and the private sector without making specific policy recommendations.
