This paper probes the role of banks and credit in our socio-economic system using the metaphor of banks as social accountants (Stiglitz and Weiss 1988). It highlights the credit nature of money, and thus the fact that money is an accounting construct. This motivates the viewing of financial...

We model a typical Asian-crisis-economy using dynamic general equilibrium tech-niques. Exchange rates obtain from nontrivial fiat-currencies demands. Sudden stops/bank-panics are possible, and key for evaluating the merits of alternative ex-change rate regimes. Strategic complementarities...

Interest rates in the USA and in other countries have experienced persistent and generalised declines since the 1980s. The main interpretations of this phenomenon ignore the role of monetary factors, such as financial and monetary policy. The essay proposes an alternative interpretation based on...

We study the economics and finance scholars’ reaction to the 2008 financial crisis using machine learning language analyses methods of Latent Dirichlet Allocation and dynamic topic modelling algorithms, to analyze the texts of 14,270 NBER working papers covering the 1999–2016 period. We find...

This note shows that the Italian Mini BOTs proposed in 2019 bore the potential neither to become Italian legal tender nor to practically increase Italian government debt, but to practically cause a mere reduction in taxation and thence in government spending or transfers. Since the Eurozone...

We examine the response of U.S. (VIX) and German (VDAX) implied volatility indices to the announcement of interest rate policy decisions by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and the European Central Bank (ECB). We confirm prior findings that VIX declines on FOMC meetings days. We present...

In the U.S. over the past 17 years competition among banks to provide home mortgages has failed. The reason is that there is a finite need for new housing starts at around 1.8 million homes per year and that there is a finite need for funds if house prices are to move in line with the CPI...

The paper discusses the structural changes taking place in the financial system of the Republic of Croatia after the country became independent. Particular attention is given to the banking system, bankruptcies and rehabilitation of banks. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the development of...

The Federal Reserve (Fed) and the U.S. Treasury have taken unprecedented steps to stem the financial crisis that began in August 2007 as part of the extended foreclosure crisis. In the most recent episode in September 2008, seven financial institutions either failed or were merged with stronger...

The mainstream inflation-targeting literature makes the strong assumption that the central bank can exactly target the interest rate which affects investment and consumption decisions and hence the money supply plays no role in the monetary policy strategy. This assumption is equivalent to...