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This course analyzes the nature and effects of financial arrangements on economies operating in an international context. To be more specific, the course studies the effects of domestic and international banking, finance, foreign direct investment and macroeconomic policy and institutions on capital accumulation, unemployment, inflation, income distribution and international balance of power. It will also study the keystone international financial institutions at both regional and global levels such as World Bank, IMF, ADB, and AIIB. It then talks about the evolution and future prospect of the global financial system.
This book argues that the gold standard fundamentally constrained economic policies, and that it was largely responsible for creating the unstable economic environment on which they acted. Beginning with the prewar gold standard, the book then reviews the transformation of the international economic and political environment by the war. The book covers German hyperinflation, contrasts inflationary chaos elsewhere in Europe with the experience of countries that repelled the inflationary threat, and considers the operation of the reconstructed gold standard system. The book also traces the consequences of the disintegration of the gold standard system, and concludes with implications of persistence for the postwar international economic order.
The book examines how old mindsets, market fundamentalism, loose monetary policy, carry trade, lax supervision, greed, cronyism, and financial engineering caused both the Asian crisis of the late 1990s and the current global crisis of 2007-2009. Beginning with a quick timeline for the Asian crisis, the book looks at the role of Japan in the East Asian crisis, and examines the evolution of the East Asian mindset. The book also examines the individual country cases, starting with Thailand and ending with China, the emerging giant, and the emergence of the current crisis.
This book explains how the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 altered the international balance of power, affecting the patterns and pulse of world politics. The crisis, Kirshner argues, brought about an end to what he identifies as the "second postwar American order" because it undermined the legitimacy of the economic ideas that underpinned that order—especially those that encouraged and even insisted upon uninhibited financial deregulation. The crisis also accelerated two existing trends: the relative erosion of the power and political influence of the United States and the increased political influence of other states, most notably, but not exclusively, China.
The essays collected in this volume explain why the euro has remained firmly planted in the dollar’s shadow. Because of America’s external deficits and looming foreign debt, the dollar can never be as dominant as it once was. But Europe’s money is unable to mount an effective challenge. As recent events have demonstrated, members of the euro zone remain vulnerable to financial crisis. Moreover, lacking a single voice, the bloc continues to punch below its weight in monetary diplomacy. The world seems headed toward a leaderless monetary order, with several currencies in contention but none clearly dominant.
This book expands on the history of financial crisis over the last 400 years, mainly focusing on the western Europe and the North America. In this sixth edition, which appears in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, an emphasis is placed on the likelihood that the roughly concurrent credit bubbles in a number of different countries are interrelated events, possibly responses to a common disturbance. The book shows how these events are transmitted internationally through current account imbalances in a world in which capital moves easily across borders.
