As bonds left untied make us reflect on the places where we never went, this chapter offers an economic, historical and political meditation on a bond between Portugal and Rothschild that was not tied. By discussing what was not and what might have been, the story offers ways to reflect on what...

In this article, we study Europe's monetary geography on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Our unit of analysis is the city and we explore inter-city linkages. Important findings include a considerable degree of integration and multilateralism with monetary centres having already emerged as...

During the 1930s, rating agencies took up a central role in regulatory supervision that they still have today. The proximate cause for this changeover was the economic shock of the Great Depression. Exploring the performance of rating agencies in assessing the risks of sovereign debt, an...

This paper is the transcript of the lunch speech delivered at the seminar on sovereign risk hosted by the BIS in January 2013. Full publication: "http://ssrn.com/abstract=2420000" Sovereign Risk: A World Without Risk-Free Assets?