Financial Globalisation

The sharp realities of financial globalization become clear during crises, when winners and losers emerge. Crises usher in short- and long-term changes to the status quo, and everyone agrees that learning from crises is a top priority. The Evidence and Impact of Financial Globalization devotes separate articles to specific crises, the conditions that cause them, and the longstanding arrangements devised to address them. While other books and journal articles treat these subjects in isolation, this volume presents a wide-ranging, consistent, yet varied specificity. Substantial, authoritative, and useful, these articles provide material unavailable elsewhere. Substantial articles by top scholars sets this volume apart from other information sources Rapidly developing subjects will interest readers well into the future Reader demand and lack of competitors underline the high value of these reference works

Since the 1990s, several emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) have, to varying degrees, embraced the process of financial globalisation, broadly defined as a set of policies that involve allowing for greater openness to cross-border capital flows as well as greater market access to foreign financial institutions. This book provides a systematic empirical analysis on the complex interactions between financial sector development, macroeconomic and financial stability in EMDEs in general and those in the Asian region in particular. The book consists of three sections pertaining to monetary and exchange rate policies under financial globalisation; financial inclusion and macroeconomic policies in the context of financial liberalisation; and finally, the dynamics of foreign direct investment flows and their real impacts in EMDEs. Each of the chapters analyse important economic policy issues of contemporary relevance and is informed by data and rigorous empirical analysis. The book will be appealing to anyone interested in exploring the implications of a key set of issues emanating from financial globalisation on EMDEs in a rigorous but readable manner.

Financial globalisation refers to the ongoing integration of once poorly connected national financial markets. A key aspect of globalisation is a decline in financial home bias -- the tendency for domestic saving to be invested predominantly at home, with domestic portfolios tilted heavily toward home-country assets. Recent years have in fact seen a pronounced decline in home bias, with a record fraction of global saving going to cross-border investments. Indeed, in 2005 and 2006, the share of global saving invested abroad climbed past 50 percent for the first time. The trend toward greater cross-border investment has been world-wide, with the United States, other advanced economies, and emerging economies all investing a markedly higher fraction of saving abroad. Significantly, U.S. external investment as a share of saving has risen less dramatically than the share for other countries. Comparing the mid-1990s with the middle of the current decade, we see that U.S. outflows as a share of domestic saving have risen by roughly 20 percentage points; the increase abroad has been close to 35 percentage points. As a result, the United States now lags the rest of the world by a considerable margin in the share of national saving invested abroad. It is instructive to consider the smaller scale of outflows from the United States in light of the current account balance of payments accounting identity described earlier. In particular, had outflows from the United States risen in line with the global trend, the country would have required that much more inward investment to finance an unchanged sequence of current account deficits. In turn, more robust U.S. demand for foreign assets, and the consequent need to attract additional inflows, would have placed downward pressure on the dollar, leading to at least somewhat smaller deficits. This scenario illustrates a more general point: developments that lead to shifts in gross capital flows have important feedback effects on net flows.

The author enunciates certain guiding principles in order to create a more stable international financial architecture and recommends a series of concrete measures. This most timely and useful follow-up to his very successful previous book, The Globalization of Finance: A Citizen's Guide, contributes greatly to the public understanding of the intricacies of global finance and to the possibilities of effective action by peoples' movements campaigning for a more just and sound financial system."--Jacket.

Many prominent critics regard the international financial system as the dark side of globalization, threatening disadvantaged nations near and far. But in The Next Great Globalization, eminent economist Frederic Mishkin argues the opposite: that financial globalization today is essential for poor nations to become rich. Mishkin argues that an effectively managed financial globalization promises benefits on the scale of the hugely successful trade and information globalizations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This financial revolution can lift developing nations out of squalor and increase the wealth and stability of emerging and industrialized nations alike. By presenting an unprecedented picture of the potential benefits of financial globalization, and by showing in clear and hard-headed terms how these gains can be realized, Mishkin provides a hopeful vision of the next phase of globalization. Mishkin draws on historical examples to caution that mismanagement of financial globalization, often aided and abetted by rich elites, can wreak havoc in developing countries, but he uses these examples to demonstrate how better policies can help poor nations to open up their economies to the benefits of global investment. According to Mishkin, the international community must provide incentives for developing countries to establish effective property rights, banking regulations, accounting practices, and corporate governance--the institutions necessary to attract and manage global investment. And the West must be a partner in integrating the financial systems of rich and poor countries--to the benefit of both. The Next Great Globalization makes the case that finance will be a driving force in the twenty-first-century economy, and demonstrates how this force can and should be shaped to the benefit of all, especially the disadvantaged nations most in need of growth and prosperity.

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The recent crisis has redrawn attention to financial globalization. Dilip Das examines under what circumstances it can be welfare-enhancing and lead to rapid economic growth. Written in an accessible style, the book gives the latest insights on the topic.

This study provides a candid, systematic, and critical review of recent evidence on this complex subject. Based on a review of the literature and some new empirical evidence, it finds that (1) in spite of an apparently strong theoretical presumption, it is difficult to detect a strong and robust causal relationship between financial integration and economic growth; (2) contrary to theoretical predictions, financial integration appears to be associated with increases in consumption volatility (both in absolute terms and relative to income volatility) in many developing countries; and (3) there appear to be threshold effects in both of these relationships, which may be related to absorptive capacity. Some recent evidence suggests that sound macroeconomic frameworks and, in particular, good governance are both quantitatively and qualitatively important in affecting developing countries’ experiences with financial globalization.