House price bubbles, and their aftermath, have become a focus of macro-economic policy concern in most developed countries. This book elucidates the two-way relationship between house-price fluctuations and economic fundamentals. Housing has many features which make it distinct from other...

Financial crises, often of an apparently contagious nature, have become more frequent over the last two decades than they were previously. The monetary authorities, especially central banks, and, in the international context, the International Monetary Fund, have had to decide how to handle...

This work is concerned with the question of why oxidative desulfurization (ODS) catalyst that show good catalytic performance for ODS of model gasoline thiophenic compounds is not effective for real gasoline. For the first time, the effects of gasoline composition on ODS using a phosphotungstic...

The second half of August 1998 was dominated by two events. From 14 to 28 August, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) intervened in Hong Kong equity markets to prevent a speculative double play against their currency board. On 17 August, Russia announced its default on sovereign bonds. This...

The Economics of Seasonal Cycles by Jeffrey A. Miron. Pp. xviii+225. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1996. ($US30.00 cloth) WEB INFORMATION: http://mitpress.mit.edu/book-home.tcl?isbn=O262133237.

Despite recent reforms to China's financial system, there remain numerous shortcomings. The asset quality of state-owned banks continues to be unsatisfactory, with taxpayers and depositors subsidising both SOBs and SOEs. Banks' loan margins and capital adequacy remain too low. The capital market...