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High public debt often produces the drama of default and restructuring. But debt is also reduced through financial repression, a tax on bondholders and savers via negative or belowmarket real interest rates. After WWII, capital controls and regulatory restrictions created a captive audience for government debt, limiting tax-base erosion. Financial repression is most successful in liquidating debt when accompanied by inflation. For the advanced economies, real interest rates were negative 1⁄2 of the time during 1945–1980. Average annual interest expense savings for a 12—country sample range from about 1 to 5 percent of GDP for the full 1945–1980 period. We suggest that, once again, financial repression may be part of the toolkit deployed to cope with the most recent surge in public debt in advanced economies.
We've been assured that the recession is over, but the country and the economy continue to feel the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, and people are still searching for answers about what caused it, what it has wrought, and how we can recover. This selection from the best-selling book This Time Is Different—the definitive history of financial crises, including the recent subprime meltdown—answers these questions and more. Princeton Shorts are brief selections excerpted from influential Princeton University Press publications produced exclusively in eBook format. They are selected with the firm belief that while the original work remains an important and enduring product, sometimes we can all benefit from a quick take on a topic worthy of a longer book. In a world where every second counts, how better to stay up-to speed on current events and digest the kernels of wisdom found in the great works of the past? Princeton Shorts enables you to be an instant expert in a world where information is everywhere but quality is at a premium. The Second Great Contraction does just that.
Ratings, Rating Agencies and the Global Financial System brings together the research of economists at New York University and the University of Maryland, along with those from the private sector, government bodies, and other universities. The first section of the volume focuses on the historical origins of the credit rating business and its present day industrial organization structure. The second section presents several empirical studies crafted largely around individual firm-level or bank-level data. These studies examine (a) the relationship between ratings and the default and recovery experience of corporate borrowers, (b) the comparability of credit ratings made by domestic and foreign rating agencies, and (c) the usefulness of financial market indicators for rating banks, among other topics. In the third section, the record of sovereign credit ratings in predicting financial crises and the reaction of financial markets to changes in credit ratings is examined. The final section of the volume emphasizes policy issues now facing regulators and credit rating agencies.
This study reviews the literature on the origins of currency and banking crises. It presents empirical tests on the performance of alternative early-warning indicators for emerging-market economies. The book also identifies crisis-threshold values for early-warning indicators.
The essays taken on the issues that have fascinated Calvo most as an academic, a senior advisor at the International Monetary Fund and as the chief economist at the Inter-American Development Bank: monetary and exchange rate policy, financial crises, debt, taxation and reform, and transition and growth.
This book is an attempt to build some structure around the issues of sovereign debt to help guide economists, practitioners, and policymakers through this complicated, but not intractable, subject.
If you think the current administration is mismanaging the economy straight towards disaster, you're not alone: so do two top economists from both sides of the political aisle. In Seeds of Destruction, former Bush chief White House economist R. Glenn Hubbard and well-known CNBC commentator Peter Navarro explain why current economic policy is a catastrophic failure. Then, they offer a comprehensive, bipartisan blueprint for reversing the decline of America's currency, manufacturing base, and standard of living - setting the stage for the epic policy debates that will precede the 2010 elections. Hubbard and Navarro begin with a "checklist" of what it takes to be a prosperous, democratic nation...
Recent changes in technology, along with the opening up of many regions previously closed to investment, have led to explosive growth in the international movement of capital. Flows from foreign direct investment and debt and equity financing can bring countries substantial gains by augmenting local savings and by improving technology and incentives. Investing companies acquire market access, lower cost inputs, and opportunities for profitable introductions of production methods in the countries where they invest. But, as was underscored recently by the economic and financial crises in several Asian countries, capital flows can also bring risks. Although there is no simple explanation of the...
The volume of capital flows between industrial and developing countries has grown dramatically in the past decade and has become a major issue in a world that is increasingly "globalized." Here Takatoshi Ito and Anne O. Krueger, two leading experts on this topic, have assembled a group of scholars who address different types of capital flows—bank lending, bonds, direct foreign investment—and the implications they hold for economic performance. With its particular focus on the Asian financial crises, this work presents a new model for policy makers everywhere in thinking about the role of private capital flows.