Archive for the ‘Memo’ Category

The Economics of Height

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

The New York Times Blog features an interesting article about the different average heights between North- and South Koreans, and Europeans and Americans. The author Tara Parker-Pope writes about the relevance of height statistics for economic performance: While the conditions for North Koreans are troubling, Americans have a similar height gap ...

G8-Action Plan on Local Bond Markets - Missing Follow-Up Documents

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

The overview of G8 Action Plan on Local Bond Markets lists a couple of documents that were mentioned in the implementation report to be published soon, but have not been published since: IMF: "ABS in Emerging Markets: Recent Trends and Policy Implications" Capital Markets Consultative Group (CMCG): Study about the Impediments ...

Complementary Currencies

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

A list of resources related to local currencies, sometimes also called complementary currencies can be found here.

Thoughts on transnational networks of private international bodies in the financial architecture

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

In most fields of regulation, even on the national level, organisation representing private interests or corporations have a saying. Private interestes are expressed through lobbyism and public relation activities, but the governance system in most states is characterized by representatives from the relevant industries having their say in standard-setting and ...

Deutsche Bank - Banking and Stock Glossary

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Deutsche Bank has a glossary for market and stock terms. They list the following international financial institutions: AIBD - Association of International Bond Dealers, now ICMA. BIS - Bank for International Settlements EBR - European Bank for Reconstruction and Development ECB - European Central Bank EIB - European Investment Bank ECSDA - European Central Securities Depositories ...

Intergovernmentalism in Financial Regulation

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Puzzling Complexity The global financial architecture is very complex. Despite increasing liberalization of financial markets, increased system risk and integration of the economies through the financial markets in the last 30 years, there is no single World Financial Authority regulating the financial markets, as Alexander, Eatwell and Dhumale have suggested. Instead what ...

Project: Mapping the Financial Governance

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

When academics, analysts and scholars analyze the causes and remedies for the current credit crisis, most of them analyze macro-economic trends such as exchange rate movements, or micro-economic changes such as Basel II. How the global financial architecture evolved and how that influences the probability of crisis is very rarely discussed. ...

Global Financial Governance - Definitions by Alexander, Eatwell and Dhumale

Monday, April 14th, 2008

Alexander, Eatwell and Dhumale make this causal explanation for the need of Global Financial Governance (p. 14): In the post-Bretton-Woods-Era, banks and financial instutions have adopted innovative financial instruments to diversify earnings and to hedge against credit and market risk. [Is this really the case? Wasn't it rather to hedge primarily ...

Financial stability - a public good?

Monday, April 14th, 2008

When defining Financial Stability, the authors of the book on "Global Financial Governance" stated that financial stability is a "public good [which] will never be provided adequately by the market without regulatory intervention" (p. 18). In the traditional meaning, a public good does not necessarily need public intervention or regulation, it ...

What is a Hedge Fund (or how do they differ from mutual funds)?

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

Anthony Clake, who is working at Marshall Wace had to give a definition of what Hedge Funds are at the London School of Economics Alternative Investment Conference. He referred to the Wikipedia-Entry on Hedge Funds, but I found an even better description in Hulls book which also outlines the differences to ...