The market for external ratings is dominated worldwide as well as in the European Union (EU) by three major credit rating agencies (CRAs). These "Big Three" are Standard & Poor's (S&P), Moody's and Fitch Ratings. Due to the oligopolistic market structure and possible involvement in the 2008...

A large share of dollar-denominated lending is done by non-U.S. banks, particularly European banks. We present a model in which such banks cut dollar lending more than euro lending in response to a shock to their credit quality. Because these banks rely on wholesale dollar funding, while raising...

his essay places the first blueprint for the Intellectual Property Currency (IPC) funding that the International Central Bank for Intellectual Properties (ICB/IP) would issue to finance the implementation of intellectual capital and the generation of the next one. The blueprint formulates the...

Proponents of the so-called New Economy claim that it entails a structural change of the economy. Such a change, in turn, would require the central bank to rethink its monetary policy to the extent that traditional relationships between inflation and economic growth are no longer valid. But such...

This paper is a critical engagement with the four design principles for Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) recently proposed by Kumhof and Noone (KN). It is argued that the implicit notion of parity underlying KN's analysis is too narrow as it is only focused on the exchange rate between CBDC...

The Bitcoin Market Potential Index conceptualizes and ranks the potential utility of bitcoin across 178 countries to show where the cryptocurrency has the greatest relative potential for adoption. The index utilizes a data set with 40 variables from the following areas: technology penetration,...

The prospect of central banks issuing digital currency (CBDC) immediately raises the question of how this new form of money should co-exist and interact with existing forms of money. This paper evaluates three different scenarios for the implementation of CBDC in terms of their monetary policy...

The first global cryptocurrency benchmarking study presents a systematic and comprehensive picture of a rapidly evolving industry, illustrating how cryptocurrencies are being used, stored, transacted and mined. The study gathered non-public data from more than 100 cryptocurrency companies and...

Global economic trade is often argued to be as old as trade. The question of the nature of the exchange is the issue. While tin from England may have reached Sumeria 4,000 years ago, or Phoenicians' ships entered the Africa area of Cape Palmas at about the same time, the problem of exchange is a...

The paper examines the evolving role of gold in the light of the current gold rush in India despite the worsening financial crisis across the globe and aggressive inflationary conditions. Economically, gold is a lucrative investment that consistently provides high rate of returns, a hedge...