This paper examines the alternative views of fixed versus floating exchange rates presented in Gottfried Haberler's Prosperity and Depression (1937) and Ragnar Nurkse's Interwar Currency Experience (1944). It shows how Haberler presented a model of exchange rates that is an anticipation of the...

Finance has become more a problem than a solution to what the world most wants: socially inclusive growth. It has become a source of crises that threaten the development of the real economy. It has escaped accountability to democratic institutions and often helped, instead, to influence and...

Economic sanctions and covert actions from hegemonic states are common tools used to influence other countries. Less is known about non-state actors such as banks and their impact across borders. We use new firm-level data from Chile to document a substantial decrease in financial relations with...

Public international law increasingly is called upon to provide a framework for private international law-treaties for recognition and enforcement of civil judgments and to limit the adjudicative jurisdiction of civil and criminal courts, to codify rules for choice of law, and to define safe...

From the dawn of civilization, the ever-growing sophistication of human society, division of labour, specialization, and comparative advantage rendered trade an indispensable part of any human enterprise. The need for trade begets the need for finance, and as trade becomes globally...

Financial markets have experienced unprecedented transformations, signs of which have emerged since the late 1970s. In recent years substantial consolidation occurred. In response to changes in macroeconomic variables, such as GDP, industrial production, inflation and the political business...

The emergence of bitcoin poses an important question for monetary theorists: can bitcoin compete with or even replace existing fiat monies? To answer this question, one must be able to determine what gives intrinsically useless monies their value, what determines the coexistence of alternative...

This article explains the roots of financial crises in one of the oldest and most fundamental problems of commercial law: hidden leverage. Common law courts wrestled with this problem for centuries and developed a time – tested solution: the doctrine of secret liens. If the debtor becomes...

This paper reviews key policy messages and warnings about developments in the run-up to the global financial and economic crisis that began in mid-2007 which are contained in the main publications of the IMF, the OECD and the BIS and discuss issues relevant to strengthening their surveillance...

It was everyone's worst nightmare; the spectre of systemic collapse. And this time, everyone was in it together. The complexity of modern financial instruments was one obvious culprit. Centuries old legal principles, such as the notion of "insurable interest", were also cast aside; old fashioned...