This book examines the origins of modern corporate finance systems during the rapid industrialization period leading up to World War I; leading to three sets of conclusions. First, modern financial systems are rooted in the past, are idiosyncratic to specific countries and are highly path-dependent. Therefore, to understand current financial institutions, we must take stock of the forces at play in the near and distant past. Second, financial institutions and markets do not create economic growth without significant first steps in industrial development and supporting institutions. Third, and most important from the modern policy standpoint, there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution to financial system design and industrial development. Having specific types of financial institutions is far less important than developing a strong, stable and legally protected financial system with a rich diversity of institutions and vibrant markets that can adapt to changing needs.

In this book, the authors treat macroeconomic models as composed of large numbers of micro-units or agents of several types and explicitly discuss stochastic dynamic and combinatorial aspects of interactions among them. In mainstream macroeconomics sound microfoundations for macroeconomics have meant incorporating sophisticated intertemporal optimization by representative agents into models. Optimal growth theory, once meant to be normative, is now taught as a descriptive theory in mainstream macroeconomic courses. In neoclassical equilibria flexible prices led the economy to the state of full employment and marginal productivities are all equated. Professors Aoki and Yoshikawa contrariwise show that such equilibria are not possible in economies with a large number of agents of heterogeneous types. They employ a set of statistical dynamical tools via continuous-time Markov chains and statistical distributions of fractions of agents by types available in the new literature of combinatorial stochastic processes, to reconstruct macroeconomic models.

Despite the successes achieved in liberalizing trade by multilateral trade negotiations sponsored by the World Trade Organization (WTO), numerous countries have separately negotiated preferential trade treaties with one another. Representing a significant departure from the WTO's central principle of non-discrimination among member countries, preferential trade blocs are the subject of an intense academic and policy debate. The first section of this 2005 book presents a rudimentary and intuitive introduction to the economics of preferential trade agreements. The following chapters present the author's theoretical and empirical research on a number of questions surrounding the issue of preferential trade agreements including the design of necessarily welfare-improving trade blocs, the quantitative (econometric) evaluation of the economic (welfare) impact of preferential trade liberalization, and the impact of preferential trade agreements and the multilateral trade system.

This book presents an economic survey of international capital mobility from the late nineteenth century to the present. The authors examine the theory and empirical evidence surrounding the fall and rise of integration in the world market. A discussion of institutional developments focuses on capital controls and the pursuit of macroeconomic policy objectives in shifting monetary regimes. The Great Depression emerges as the key turning point in recent history of international capital markets, and offers important insights for contemporary policy debates. Its principal legacy is that the return to a world of global capital is marked by great unevenness in outcomes regarding both risks and rewards of capital market integration. More than in the past, foreign investment flows largely from rich countries to other rich countries. Yet most financial crises afflict developing countries, with costs for everyone.

This study examines the impact of British capital flows on the evolution of capital markets in four countries - Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the United States - over the years 1870 to 1914. In substantive chapters on each country it offers parallel histories of the evolution of their financial infrastructures - commercial banks, non-bank intermediaries, primary security markets, formal secondary security markets, and the institutions that provide the international financial links connecting the frontier country with the British capital market. At one level, the work constitutes a quantitative history of the development of the capital markets of five countries in the late nineteenth century. At a second level, it provides the basis for a useable taxonomy for the study of institutional invention and innovation. At a third, it suggests some lessons from the past about modern policy issues.

Recent years have seen a substantial increase in the volatility of exchange rates. This trend has prompted economists and finance analysts to question if the observed behaviour of exchange rates is consistent with a rational model. Does that volatility hinder trade? What are financial markets' effects on countries' investment decisions, and how would changes in fixed exchange rates affect growth and welfare? What are the requirements to make such changes feasible? Professors Sercu and Uppal examine these issues in the context of dynamic general equilibrium models, explicitly considering the role of financial markets while allowing for commodity markets to be segmented across countries. They show that the theoretical models for exchange rates in this context are quite different from those put forth by monetary theorists and proponents of purchasing power parity arguments.

A blend of theoretical and policy-oriented analysis, this book provides a comprehensive assessment of the causes and implications of the 1992–3 crisis of the exchange rate mechanism of the European monetary system. Cogent factual presentation - including new details on the crisis - original theoretical analysis, and an interpretation rooted in the theory, make this treatment essential reading to understand the process toward economic and political integration in Europe. The authors first sketch the history of monetary cooperation in Europe from Bretton Woods to Maastricht. A step-by-step account of the 1992–3 events follows, including a discussion of the extent to which financial markets anticipated the crisis. A survey of the literature on the subject introduces the authors' center-periphery model of currency crisis. The authors argue that the vulnerability of Europe to financial crisis was - and still is - the result of the lack of concern with the systemic dimensions of monetary policy-making.