This is an essay on Financial Intermediaries written for the New Palgrave. It includes sections on national wealth, financial markets, assets, risk and regulation.

Fixed exchange rate, pegs to hard currencies that can be adjusted, are fragile, the more so the more mobile are capital funds across currencies and national markets. Once market participants doubt, for whatever reason, the ability of a developing or emerging economy's central bank to meet its...

The intellectual breakthroughs that mark the neoclassical revolution in economic analysis occurred in Europe around 1870. The next two decades witnessed lively debates in which the new theory more or less absorbed or was absorbed in the classical tradition that preceded and provoked it. In the...

The paper reviews the major developments of the last three decades: the rise and fall of monetarism as theory and as targeting of intermediate monetary aggregates; targeting of nominal GDP in order to escape volatility of velocity of money; the abandonment of intermediate targets as superfluous;...

Three interrelated issues must be faced in assessing the future of OASI. I shall discuss each in turn. Balancing Contributions and Benefits. The overriding long-run issue about OASI is the balance between the tax contributions of the young and the benefits of the old. The system is now geared to...