Monetary problems are important and widely debated, but the complexity of the international monetary system and the disparate systems that make it up gives rise to many fallacies about the inner workings of these systems. When shared by those who decide economic and monetary policies, these fallacies can have damaging consequences. This book provides a rigorous and approachable analysis of these systems and consequences, providing the keys to untangling and understanding their mechanisms a...

Tax Tyranny does not aim to give a description of existing tax systems, rather it provides readers with the intellectual instruments which enable them to understand the role of taxation in the workings of economic systems and to evaluate the fairness of taxes.The book begins with a general analysis of the economic effects of taxes. It stresses that they diminish incentives to create, to work, to save or to invest. It also stresses the fact that it is not sufficient to care...

Competition, or the freedom to enter into a market, contributes greatly to the differentiation of human activities and therefore to economic progress. This fascinating book highlights the similarities between human systems at both the micro and macro level, and demonstrates how competition can positively affect the economic workings of firms and countries.Pascal Salin explores a number of issues associated with competition and human diversity, with a particular focus on the Europea...

Competition and free trade are both concepts which are absolutely central for the understanding of human societies but are also often the subjects of fears and criticisms. It is argued that it is not possible to understand what competition really is without referring to the concept of freedom, and that free trade must be understood as the way to expand the scope of competition.This book uniquely analyses the two concepts as closely interlinked, by approaching them in two parts. The...

An updated look at what Fischer Black's ideas on business cycles and equilibrium mean todayThroughout his career, Fischer Black described a view of business fluctuations based on the idea that a well-developed economy will be continually in equilibrium. In the essays that constitute this book, which is one of only two books Black ever wrote, he explores this idea thoroughly and reaches some surprising conclusions.With the newfound popularity of quantitative finance and risk...

The financial crisis has been blamed on reckless bankers, irrational exuberance, government support of mortgages for the poor, financial deregulation, and expansionary monetary policy. Specialists in banking, however, tell a story with less emotional resonance but a better correspondence to the evidence: the crisis was sparked by the international regulatory accords on bank capital levels, the Basel Accords.In one of the first studies critically to examine the Basel Accords, En...

We live in a monetary economy, so it is not surprising that money plays an important role within economic theory. The argument of this book is that this role has become too important, and has warped our ability to think about the economy. The important psychological role of money within society has been transferred to monetary aggregates, and they are given far more significance than they deserve. Economists have wasted considerable time discussing reforms to the monetary system, such as Q...

Directed both at students of international finance and practitioners in the field, the book stresses the importance of treating the analysis of sovereign risk in a more general framework than is typically the case, identifying the components of both the demand and supply of sovereign loans.The author also discusses the link between the unique aspects of sovereign lending, the interdependence of the international banking system and the potential instability in the world financial sy...

Fiscal policy seeks to equilibrate the public sector's financing needs with the private sector's demand for investment and a sustainable balance of payments. Correct measurement of the public sector's net use of resources is therefore an important prerequisite for managing the macroeconomy. This volume, edited by Mario I. Blejer and Adrienne Cheasty, is organized around four issues: the adequacy of summary measures of the fiscal deficit, conventional and adjusted deficits, coverage (size) of ...

Country-Risk Analysis is a comprehensive, practical guide to the management of international risk and cross-border lending. The last fifteen years of international commercial bank lending have witnessed a classical boom-and-bust cycle. Yet it is only recently that a formalized approach to country risk assessment has been implemented in the major international banks.Ron Solberg's volume provides a state-of-the-art review of the country risk techniques that have evolved in the contex...

'A very useful introduction to the techniques of social accounting' Bankers' Magazine.'Remarkable feat of compression and expositionit will surely remain for a long time the best summary of macro-accounting techniques' Accounting Research.This volume covers developments both in the scope and content of official economic statistics of national income and expenditure and in their use for short-term and long-term economic planning.

An original and systematic synthesis of the major postwar developments in theory and policy of balance-of-payments adjustment, this book focuses on the present-day system of pegged-but-adjustable exchange rates and the problems that policy authorities must face if they are to attain full employment, price stability, balance-of-payments equilibrium, and a satisfactory rate of economic growth. The dominate theme of this book is that any system of exchange rates carries with it assumptions ab...