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Begin New Search Topic Financial Crisis Content Type Working Paper Publication Year within 25 Years

301. Improving Resolution Options for Systemically Relevant Financial Institutions

Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
There are critical holes in the existing regulatory framework for handling large complex financial institutions that become impaired. First, regulators may not have the legal authority to do what is necessary to resolve a distressed institution's problems, including selling some divisions, closing or liquidating others, renegotiating or abrogating some contracts, and finding parties to manage what is left. Second, even if regulators have the necessary authority over part of the institution, they may not have authority over the whole firm. Holding companies, for example, often have subsidiaries that are incorporated in multiple countries and therefore governed by different legal codes. Third, regulators are unlikely to be aware of all the interconnections within the institution, and between the institution's various subsidiaries and other firms. This uncertainty makes it difficult for regulators to know the best way to restructure a financial institution or, indeed, whether restructuring is even feasible without enormous disruption.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, and Financial Crisis

302. Three Decades of Politics and Failed Policies at HUD

Author:
Tad DeHaven
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has long been plagued by scandals, mismanagement, and policy failures. Most recently, HUD's subsidies and failed oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped to inflate the housing bubble, which ultimately burst and cascaded into a major financial crisis.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Markets, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States

303. How the Asia Pacific Can Drive the Global Recovery

Author:
Peter A. Petri
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The transition to a new, sustained global growth path is still precarious and will require concerted policy actions by many countries. Leadership by the G-20 will be essential for coordinating the global effort. But due to the central importance of the Asia Pacific in the world economy, regional institutions such as ASEAN+3, ASEAN+6, and APEC could also play large roles in the next phase of the recovery.
Topic:
Economics and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Israel and Asia

304. The Great Regression? Financial Crisis in an Age of Global Interdependence

Author:
Vadim Kononenko, Raimo Väyrynen, Toby Archer, Kristian Kurki (ed.), and Matti Nojonen
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
The financial crisis and the ensuing global economic downturn have been the focal point of news coverage and policy analysis for over a year now, and speculation has been rife about how things will pan out. At one extreme are those who shrug the situation off as a significant yet transient dent in economic development, with marginal repercussions on the global system. At the other end are those touting the crisis as the first step in an epoch-making transition in the global power balance, where rapidly expanding economies like China, Brazil and India will make gains on the hitherto dominant developed nations, shifting the distribution of power in the world. Whatever the eventual outcome, there is no denying that the crisis's impact on international relations will be significant.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, Power Politics, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
China, India, and Brazil

305. Russia and the Global Meltdown: Domestic and Foreign Policy Responses to the International Financial Crisis

Author:
Robert Jellinek
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
This paper has its origins in the observation that government responses to the global financial crisis are as much political phenomena as they are economic. The current global financial crisis, among its many consequences, has on a very high level shaken up the world political order. And while the crisis is international in origin—its roots lie in the breadth and the degree of the dispersal of risk associated with mortgagebacked securities, as well as the growing imbalance in international capital flows—its resolution is necessarily being carried out first and foremost on a domestic level. This is not least of all because, in the decade since the Asian financial crises, states have begun to play a dramatically increased role in international finance in relation to both multilateral financial institutions such as the IMF and traditional private actors. In an age where global economic ties are integral to domestic economies and where states themselves are becoming some of the biggest players in international capital markets, a state's global financial standing will more than ever determine its political clout on the world stage. With states acting as market makers, lenders of last resort, and regulators of last resort, the key to understanding the future of individual states in the global economic order can be found only by analyzing states' domestic and foreign policy decisions within the context of the specific constraints facing those states at home and abroad.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, Human Rights, International Trade and Finance, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Russia and Asia

306. Recovery: The Global Financial Crisis and Middle-Income Countries

Author:
Alejandro Foxley
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
No country has proved immune to the devastating effects of the current global financial crisis. But the middle-income countries of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and East Asia, which previously had achieved significant progress—economically and socially—have shown themselves to be particularly vulnerable. The crisis has highlighted important lessons for these countries, which inhabit a twilight zone between the developed and developing worlds?and those that aspire to join their ranks—as they rebuild.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Monetary Policy, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Europe, East Asia, and Latin America

307. Market Versus State: Postcrisis Economics in Latin America

Author:
Alejandro Foxley
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The global financial crisis has reignited the fierce debate about the roles of the market and the state in modern economies. Latin America, in particular, revisits this debate every time it suffers an external shock. While some blame unregulated markets, others fault states' inability to design institutions or implement policies capable of neutralizing the negative impact of these shocks on output, employment, and social welfare.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Latin America

308. Renewing Globalization and Economic Growth in a Post-Crisis World The Future of the G-20 Agenda

Author:
Alexei Monsarrat and Kiron K. Skinne
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
This statement, delivered by Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke in the understated manner of a central banker, was made nearly a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers—the event that tipped the global financial system into full crisis. Bernanke's message starkly reveals the scope of the challenge facing the stewards of the global economy.
Topic:
Economics, International Cooperation, International Trade and Finance, and Financial Crisis

309. NATO and the Economic and Financial Crisis

Author:
Keith Hartley and Binyam Solomon
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
These is some consensus among economic forecasters and international economic organizations that the world economy is stabilizing after the worst global contraction since the end of the Second World War. While it is difficult to ascertain empirically whether the massive fiscal policy support played a role or not, the improving credit conditions and the return of demand in the housing market in North America and the UK point to some evidence that the stimulus is providing the necessary short-term boost. Nonetheless, there remain significant challenges that may constrain a quick recovery including the decline in household wealth (debt-laden consumers rebuilding their savings), persistent unemployment and deleveraging (decreasing the amount of debt a firm holds by paying it off) in the financial system together with future long-term prospects of inflation.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and North America

310. Governance Challenges and the Financial Crisis: Seven Key Questions

Author:
Terry F. Buss and Lois Fu
Publication Date:
06-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The National Academy of Public Administration
Abstract:
We are in the midst of a global economic crisis. The federal government has responded on an unprecedented scale and scope, with injections of trillions into financial markets, infusions of cash to troubled industries, state and local governments, and people in need. Government is employing tools in ways never befo re considered and inventing new tools, in the hope of stabilizing the economy and spurring economic recovery.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Financial Crisis, Governance, and Reform

311. A Copper-Bottomed Crisis? The Impact of the Global Economic Meltdown on Zambia

Author:
Duncan Green
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
At the time of independence in 1964 Zambia was a middle-income country and appeared set to develop into a prosperous nation. However, the combination of a tumultuous world economy and fiscal mismanagement led to rapid economic decline, which continued unabated into the 1980s and 1990s. Average economic growth from 1990–1999 was the lowest in the region, and unemployment and inflation soared resulting in per capita incomes 50% less in 1999 than they had been 25 years earlier.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Africa

312. Die Anspruchsinflation des Wirtschaftssystems

Author:
Jens Beckert
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The paper takes a theoretical look at the current financial and economic crisis, drawing on existing theories on crises of capitalism. I develop the thesis that the theories of “ungovernability” and “late capitalism” were wrong in locating the origins of crises in contemporary capitalism only indirectly in the economy. The theory of late capitalism, however, rightfully pointed out that the state cannot reduce its influence over the economy without endangering the functioning of markets themselves. This is due less, however, to the difficulty of maintaining loyalty, i.e. political support for the capitalist system than to the more immediate challenge of sustaining the preconditions for the system's economic viability. Today, a theory of the crises of capitalism must devote much more attention to the intrasystemic preconditions of the economic system.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Political Theory, and Financial Crisis

313. Who can be trusted after the financial crisis?

Author:
Felix Roth
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Abstract:
The financial crisis has damaged citizens' trust in public institutions, especially the confidence that European citizens invest in the European institutions. The results of major public opinion surveys show a severe decrease in citizens' trust in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis with a slight recovery nine month later. In particular, citizens' net trust in the European Central Bank hit an historical low point in the aftermath of the financial crisis with a majority of people distrusting that institution. A variety of other surveys also show that confidence levels in the free market economy have decreased in most of the largest economies and demand for stronger state regulation has increased on both sides of the Atlantic. The key question now is whether this loss of confidence is a temporary or permanent phenomenon, which would have important consequences for the economy and for the proper working of the European institutions.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Europe

314. The City in the Global Crisis: Understanding Impacts and Strengthening the Performance of Stimulus Packages

Author:
hael Cohen
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
Though countries generate more than half their GDP in urban-based economic activities, the G-20 discussions in London and Pittsburgh devoted no recorded attention to urban infrastructure. Policy makers and designers of stimulus packages ignored two fundamental aspects of this crisis: Where the greatest impact of economic contraction are and where demand can be stimulated to generate the largest possible multipliers. This paper argues that while industrialized countries take urban and spatial dimensions of their economies for granted, this perspective is counterproductive for Latin American countries that are the most urbanized among developing countries.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, Industrial Policy, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Latin America

315. Speculating on Change: Four Paradoxes of Our Urban Future

Author:
Michael Cohen
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
The current global economic crisis demonstrates the growing inter-connectedness and its impacts on the economic welfare and political stability of both rich and poor countries—the impact of which are greater in cities. It is important to understand the role of cities in the world, both as sites for the most impacts of global change and as providing solutions to some of these problems. Today, the challenge of urban change has been transformed into the policy and institutional economic, geographic, sustainable, and political but in the end it is manifest in the streets. The world has become urban.
Topic:
Globalization, Industrial Policy, Poverty, and Financial Crisis

316. The Politics of Credit Rating Agencies in the European Union

Author:
Lucia Quaglia
Publication Date:
06-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex
Abstract:
Why did the European Union (EU) decide to regulate Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs), instead of relying on the revised rules agreed at the international level and the revised US law to which the main CRAs operating in the EU but headquartered in the US were subject to? This research addresses this key question concerning the multi-level governance of financial services using a 'soft' rational choice institutionalist framework. It is argued that the global financial crisis, acting as an exogenous shock, triggered three causal mechanisms that led to a new institutional equilibrium within and without the EU, namely the issuing of EU rules on CRAs.
Topic:
Political Economy, Financial Crisis, European Union, Finance, and Credit
Political Geography:
Europe

317. Earning from History: Financial Markets and the Approach of World Wars

Author:
Niall Ferguson
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
We are living through a paradox-or so it seems. Since September 11, 2001, according to a number of neo-conservative commentators, America has been fighting World War III (or IV, if you like to give the Cold War a number). For more than six years, these commentators have repeatedly drawn parallels between the "War on Terror" that is said to have begun in September 2001 and World War II. Immediately after 9/11, Al Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups were branded "Islamofascists". Their attack on the World Trade Center was said to be our generation's Pearl Harbor. In addition to coveting weapons of mass destruction and covertly sponsoring terrorism, Saddam Hussein was denounced as an Arab Hitler. The fall of Baghdad was supposed to be like the liberation of Paris. Anyone who opposed the policy of pre-emption was an appeaser. And so on.
Topic:
Cold War, Economics, Terrorism, War, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
America and Iran

318. Can Exchange Rates Forecast Commodity Prices?

Author:
Kenneth Rogoff, Yu-chin Chen, and Barbara Rossi
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
This paper studies the dynamic relationship between exchange rate fluctuations and world commodity price movements. Taking into account parameter instability, we demonstrate surprisingly robust evidence that exchange rates predict world commodity price movements, both in-sample and out-of-sample. Our results are consistent with a present value relationship in which the exchange rate depends on a present value of fundamentals including, for a core group of commodity exporters, the world price of their commodity exports. Because global commodity prices are essentially exogenous to these countries, we are able to avoid the endogeneity pitfalls that plague most of the related exchange rate literature. More directly, the analysis suggests that where commodity price forward markets are thin or non-existent, exchange rate-based forecasts may be a viable alternative for predicting future price movements.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Australia and New Zealand

319. Investment Cycles and Sovereign Debt Overhang

Author:
Mark Aguiar, Manuel Amador, and Gita Gopinath
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
We characterize optimal taxation of foreign capital and optimal sovereign debt policy in a small open economy where the government cannot commit to policy, seeks to insure a risk averse domestic constituency, and is more impatient than the market. Optimal policy generates long-run cycles in both sovereign debt and foreign direct investment in an environment in which the first best capital stock is a constant. The expected tax on capital endogenously varies with the state of the economy and investment is distorted by more in recessions than in booms amplifying the effect of shocks. The government's lack of commitment induces a negative correlation between investment and the stock of government debt, a "debt overhang" effect. Debt relief is never Pareto improving and cannot affect the long-run level of investment. Further, restricting the government to a balanced budget can eliminate the cyclical distortion of investment.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, Markets, and Financial Crisis

320. Foreign Exposure to Asset-Backed Securities of U.S. Origin

Author:
Daniel O. Beltran, Laurie Pounder, and Charles Thomas
Publication Date:
08-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
The financial turmoil which began in August 2007 originated, in part, because investors reassessed the quality of the assets underlying many asset-backed securities (ABS), particularly U.S. mortgages. The prominence of European banks in the early stages of the turmoil created the perception that foreigners held an outsized share of risky U.S. securities and prompted questions of why Europeans were so exposed. This paper evaluates that perception by quantifying foreign exposure to ABS with U.S. underlying collateral. Using the latest survey data on foreign portfolio holdings of U.S. securities, we find that the ultimate losses that foreigners could incur arising from U.S. underlying assets are small relative to most scale variables, although initial total mark-to-market losses are estimated to be significantly larger. Among other reasons for this difference between ultimate and initial losses, we demonstrate that the securitization chain can amplify mark-to-market price declines in the presence of uncertainty or illiquidity. Finally, we show that, relative to the size of the market, foreigners’ holdings of U.S. mortgage-backed securities do not appear to be elevated compared with their holdings of other U.S. assets.
Topic:
Economics, Financial Crisis, Financial Markets, and Mortgages
Political Geography:
United States and North America