Abstract This chapter describes how the structure and governance of international trade finance—the oldest domain of international finance—evolved from the Middle Ages until today. Trade finance products initially consisted of idiosyncratic assets issued by local merchants and bankers. The financing of international trade then became increasingly centralized and credit instruments were standardized through the diffusion of the local standards of consecutive leading trading centers (Antwerp, Amsterdam, London). This process of market centralization/product standardization culminated in the nineteenth century when London became the global center for international trade finance and the sterling bill of exchange emerged as the most widely used trade finance instrument. The structure of the trade finance market then evolved considerably following World War I and disintegrated during the interwar deglobalization and Bretton Woods period. The reconstruction of global trade finance in the post-1970 period gave way to the decentralized market structure that prevails nowadays.
Abstract The European sovereign debt crisis and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed the European Economic and Monetary Union’s fragility, which essentially emanates from the inherent tension between a single monetary policy and decentralized fiscal policies. To cushion economic and financial shocks and sever the sovereign-bank doom loop, different proposals to create a common public debt security have been put forward, although none of them has so far seen the light of day. Building on pertinent economic and finance scholarship, this article reviews four promising safe asset proposals from a legal perspective: Sovereign bond-backed securities (SBBS), E-bonds, Purple bonds, and Coronabonds. Rather than focusing on their feasibility under EU law or national constitutional law, this article compares the proposals from an investor perspective against the backdrop of the following formal and functional legal characteristics that render assets ‘safe’: governing law, dispute settlement forum, investor protection, and investor representation in sovereign debt restructurings. Against this backdrop, targeted recommendations on critical design elements of safe assets, with the aim of reconciling the economic policy objectives with the pertinent legal constraints, are advanced.
The Central Bank of China is testing its Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) in the cities of Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and Xunan with the involvement of four large state-owned banks in the ...
Central banks are flocking to government-backed cryptocurrency, taking full advantage of the media attention brought to Bitcoin and other digital currency. However, while government-backed cryptocurrency avoids some pitfalls presented by private cryptocurrencies, other problems are less easily sidestepped. And government-backed cryptocurrencies, if widely adopted, could present issues to the stability of the international monetary system. These problems must be addressed, and not only as they arise. Unfortunately, national and international governments have shown no real ability to deal with troubles arising from private cryptocurrency. The government-backing of such digital currency changes the calculus, permitting a new entity to deal with these problems. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the best organization to deal with the issues. This Note submits that the IMF should act quickly to take pre-emptive measures and develop a system of best practices for dealing with government-backed cryptocurrency in pursuance of ensuring a stable international monetary system.
Abstract Macroeconomic strategies and policies have differed significantly among Asian countries, and yet some common issues recur despite their immense diversity in inherited historical initial conditions, differences in political systems, geopolitical situations, location and size, and natural resource endowments. The chapter examines from a comparative perspective issues like unemployment, state versus market, domestic versus foreign market, degree of openness in trade, investment and finance, industrial and technology policy, decentralization, and economic and social inequality. While some countries have been more successful than others in dealing with these issues, our comparative perspective also shows development itself as a moving target, thus requiring flexible institutional and policy responses at each separate stage of development, which makes uniform guidelines misleadingly over-simplistic.
Compared to initial public offerings (IPOs) that are sales of company ownerships, and loans that are sales of debt claims, initial coin offerings (ICOs) are sales of promises of cryptocurrency appreciation. However, regulatory uncertainties continue to prohibit successful widespread adoption. This paper examines ICOs with varying levels of success, including Mastercoin (now Omni) and Kin, as well as fraudulent ICOs, like REcoin and OneCoin. The discussion of the benefits and flaws within the ICO market examines regulatory challenges concerning risks transferred to investors through information asymmetry, while questioning the ability of regulations to enhance investor protection mechanisms without undermining the fundamental value of cryptocurrencies and ICOs as a viable funding structure.
We take this question to be isomorphic to, "What Keeps Fixed Exchange Rates Fixed?" and address it with analysis familiar in exchange-rate economics. Stablecoins solve the volatility problem by pegging to a national currency, typically the US dollar, and are used as vehicles for exchanging national currencies into non-stable cryptocurrencies, with some stablecoins having a ratio of trading volume to outstanding supply exceeding one daily. Using a rich dataset of signed trades and order books on multiple exchanges, we examine how peg-sustaining arbitrage stabilizes the price of the largest stablecoin, Tether. We find that stablecoin issuance, the closest analogue to central-bank intervention, plays only a limited role in stabilization, pointing instead to stabilizing forces on the demand side. Following Tether's introduction to the Ethereum blockchain in 2019, we find increased investor access to arbitrage trades, and a decline in arbitrage spreads from 70 to 30 basis points. We also pin down which fundamentals drive the two-sided distribution of peg-price deviations: Premiums are due to stablecoins' role as a safe haven, exhibiting, for example, premiums greater than 100 basis points during the COVID-19 crisis of March 2020; discounts derive from liquidity effects and collateral concerns.
The Banking Union is a framework composed of “Single Supervisory Mechanism （SSM）”, “Single Resolution Mechanism （SRM）” and “Deposit Guarantee Scheme （DGS）” and aims at strengthening regulation, observation and governance in the European financial sector. In the case that a bank goes into bankruptcy, it will be saved, without using public finance, between stockholders and creditors under the framework of banking union. Moreover, European Union （EU） integrates the responsibility of observation into the European Central Bank （ECB） and expects that ECB will be able to timely intervene banking system in member countries so that it can stop spreading financial crisis. On the other hand, European financial system is diversified and regional oriented in nature, reflecting its history, culture and policies. For example, in Germany, Landesbank/Sparkasse system, which is like a public bank owned by local government, and cooperative banks, which have close relationship with local businesses, has a larger share and influence. In France, large financial institutions such as Credit Agricole, BPCE group and Credit Mutuele, which are owned partly by public entity, make it possible to be both commercialization and localization at the same time by owning numerous small local banks under their umbrellas. In the Netherlands and Finland, which are economically successful in Euro zone, cooperative banks such as RaboBank and OP Group have also larger share and could keep sound banking even during European debt crisis. However, In Spain and Italy, which owns about 1/3 of bad loans in whole Euro zone, cooperative and saving banks also have larger share in their financial systems but it is criticized that its governance is one of major reasons causing financial crisis. Purpose of this paper is to overview how de-centralized financial system like saving banks and cooperative banks, which have larger influence in European countries, are overcoming the financial crisis in major European countries and to analyze and discuss effectiveness of both banking union and stability of regional financial system, emphasizing its importance as a stabilizer of money circulation in regional economy. This paper also tries to show the soundness of regional financial system during European debt crisis with recent business performance of cooperative banks which have decentralized financial structure and to complement precedent papers by indicating that characteristic of financial structure have some relationships with degree of financial crisis through comparing the characteristics of four major Euro countries such as Germany, France, Spain and Italy. （395 words）
The growing literature on Bitcoin can be divided in two groups. One performs an economic analysis of Bitcoin focusing on its monetary characteristics. The other one looks takes a financial look at the price of Bitcoin. Interestingly, both of these groups have not given much more than passing comments to the problem whether or not Bitcoin has the right monetary rule. This paper argues that Bitcoin in particular, and cryptocurrencies in general, do not have a good monetary rule, and that this shortcoming seriously limits its prospect of becoming a well-established currency.
Advocates of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin believe that having currency competition will help achieve the economic objective of price stability. This Issue Brief summarizes research that explores whether competition among privately issued fiat currencies can actually produce price stability. The research finds that in most cases, a system of private monies does not deliver price stability. And even when it does, it always is subject to self-fulfilling inflationary episodes, and it supplies a suboptimal amount of money. Although there is no economic reason to curb the use of cryptocurrencies at the moment, it is important to review key regulatory issues that policymakers need to consider now, before the use of cryptocurrencies becomes even more widespread.
Shuba Olena А., Honcharova Yuliia Yu., Bulygina Anastasia V.
The article is aimed at researching bitcoin, the digital currency. It has been found that Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, that is, the virtual money, which has no material equivalent. The history of creation and development of cryptocurrency was reviewed. There is a reduction in volatility, which guarantees the security of currency, as well as the increase in currency volume and the inability to estimate the profitability of bitcoins. The dynamics of the value of digital currency in US dollars over recent years has been analyzed. Improvement of attitude of many countries to the considered cryptocurrency, in particular the USA, Germany, Spain, Canada, Australia, Israel and Scandinavian countries has been identified. The reasons of Ukraine’s interest in Bitcoin have been considered. Possibilities of creation of cryptocurrency on the territory of Ukraine have been analyzed, i.e. cost of electricity for mining, the legal status of mining firms, and the attitude of the National Bank of Ukraine to the digital currency. It has been concluded that the recognition of Bitcoin by the world countries in the future will allow it to be granted the status of world-wide currency.
In most countries, the central bank is required to hold reserve assets as a means of providing credibility for the value of the fiat currency. These assets can be in the form of gold, foreign exchange or some other internationally recognised reserve asset and are held to permit the country to engage in international transactions. Within recent years, cryptocurrencies have been increasingly utilised for international transactions, and it is possible that the use of these cryptocurrencies might expand in the future. This paper therefore examines the potential role of digital currency balances as part of the portfolio of external assets held by a central bank. Using the case of Barbados, the paper also provides a simulation of the effect holding some proportion of their asset-base would have had on the stability of the foreign reserves as well as the return on the portfolio of assets.
Can competition among privately issued fiat currencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum work? Only sometimes. To show this, we build a model of competition among privately issued fiat currencies. We modify the current workhorse of monetary economics, the Lagos-Wright environment, by including entrepreneurs who can issue their own fiat currencies in order to maximize their utility. Otherwise, the model is standard. We show that there exists an equilibrium in which price stability is consistent with competing private monies, but also that there exists a continuum of equilibrium trajectories with the property that the value of private currencies monotonically converges to zero. These latter equilibria disappear, however, when we introduce productive capital. We also investigate the properties of hybrid monetary arrangements with private and government monies, of automata issuing money, and the role of network effects.
I show that the prices of the internationally traded crypto-currency bitcoin can be used to estimate a currency's unofficial exchange rate and capital controls at a daily interval. Two important bitcoin features are documented: (1) Bitcoin-based exchange rates approximate the behavior, but not the level, of unofficial exchange rates, and (2) Bitcoin prices contain a bitcoin-trend term and must be appropriately normalized prior to being used for this purpose. Bitcoin-based exchange rates reveal that (3) there is no consistent pattern of Granger causality between unofficial rates and official rates by exchange rate regime or barriers at the daily frequency, and (4) that countries can engage in short-interval capital controls.
Dong He, Karl Habermeier, Ross Leckow, Vikram Haksar · 11 authors
New technologies are driving transformational changes in the global financial system. Virtual currencies (VCs) and the underlying distributed ledger systems are among these. VCs offer many potential benefits, but also considerable risks. VCs could raise efficiency and in the long run strengthen financial inclusion. At the same time, VCs could be potential vehicles for money laundering, terrorist financing, tax evasion and fraud. While risks to the conduct of monetary policy seem less likely to arise at this stage given the very small scale of VCs, risks to financial stability may eventually emerge as the new technologies become more widely used. National authorities have begun to address these challenges and will need to calibrate regulation in a manner that appropriately addresses the risks without stifling innovation. As experience is gained, international standards and best practices could be considered to provide guidance on the most appropriate regulatory responses in different fields, thereby promoting harmonization and cooperation across jurisdictions.
This thesis explored, in two parts, the macroeconomic impacts of exchange rate regimes (ERR), as well as the recent developments in fiscal policy and fiscal decentralization. Part I has reconsidered the role of ERR and its interplay with fiscal, monetary and tax policy. The first result that emerges (Chapter 1) is that fixed ERR can serve as a credible policy tool for stabilizing fiscal policy. However, this stabilizing effect is conditional upon the inter-temporal distribution of the costs of loose fiscal policy. In assessing the linkage between ERR and crises (banking/financial, currency and debt), Chapter 2 evidenced that the bipolar view is no longer valid, and that, crisis proneness rather depends on the macroeconomic fundamentals (the volatility of private sector credit, the deficit-financing mechanism, and the debt-to-GDP ratio). In Chapter 3, we unveiled a strong relationship between ERR and tax policy. Countries with pegged regimes have greater reliance on domestic taxation -such as the VAT- to make up for the loss of seigniorage revenue (substitution effect). Moreover, peggers tend to collect more VAT revenue to offset the shortfall in cross border taxes following the trade liberalization reform (competitiveness effect). Part II discussed the cyclical response of fiscal policy in high debt periods, and focused on fiscal decentralization issues. In Chapter 4, we showed that the reaction of fiscal policy to the business cycle is non-linear and conditional to the level of public debt. When the debt-to-GDP ratio goes beyond a certain threshold (87%), fiscal policy loses its counter-cyclical properties. Further, we highlighted that carefully-designed fiscal rules help maintaining counter-cyclicality through an ex ante disciplinary effect. Chapters 5 and 6 analyzed the impact of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of public service delivery and fiscal policy performance, respectively. Chapter 5 revealed that a sufficient level of expenditure decentralization, coupled with revenue decentralization, improves the efficiency of public service delivery. However, the political and institutional environment is critical for reaping decentralization-led benefits. Lastly, Chapter 6 concluded that fiscal decentralization has destabilizing effect by reducing the counter-cyclicality of fiscal policy. In addition, we found that decentralization strengthens the structural fiscal balance; however, vertical fiscal imbalances reduce the benefits of decentralization. It is therefore critical to limit asymmetries between expenditure and revenue decentralization, so as to reduce the transfer-dependency of local governments to the central level, and thus prevent decentralization from weakening the fiscal stance at the general government level.
Though Bitcoin currently enjoys a healthy niche, the aspirations of many in the project are grander: to supplant the existing regime of fiat currencies with cryptocurrencies, and to do so outside of normal political channels. Its primary practical obstacle is its purchasing power volatility, arising from a rigid money stock in the face of wide swings in demand. Nevertheless, the historical example of gold, another (much more successful) money commodity with a more or less rigid supply, illuminates the institutional prerequisites for purchasing power stability, economic efficiency, and sustained growth – namely a market of financial intermediaries whose liabilities denominated in the base money themselves circulate as media of exchange. This paper discusses potential benefits and hurdles to establishing financial intermediation in cryptocurrency, as well as the possibility of managing the money supply to create a stable purchasing power cryptocurrency without the need for intermediation at all. Such schemes ultimately require an existing market of intermediaries in order to provide any benefits, the emergence of which governments are for the moment well-positioned to prevent.
Meilė Jasienė, Arvydas Paškevičius, Ieva Astrauskaitė
Searching for alternative source of bank financing, the view on capital market is taken. Recent research on capital market issues are arranged into four dimensions: theory and assumptions of efficient capital market, government’s role in it, other distortions and global interrelatedness. Main investigations are decentralized and visualized in “theoretical eight” model. Conclusions made on the diversity of interpretation of market efficiency, strongly expressed demand of information symmetry, soft actions of governments and the value of foreign performance in domestic markets. Furthermore, new approach to the classification of countries by their maturity in capital market is argued. The state of art of 2009-2012 of bond market and government debt is briefly described.
This Comment examines the potentially destabilizing effects of emerging digital currencies on the international foreign currency exchange market. Specifically, it examines "Bitcoin," a decentralized, partially anonymous, and largely unregulated digital currency that has become particularly popular in the last few years. This Comment argues that the International Monetary Fund, the institution responsible for coordinating the stability of foreign exchange rates, is ill-equipped to handle the widespread use of digital currencies in the foreign currency exchange market It highlights the inability of the Fund to intervene in the event of a speculative attack on a currency by Bitcoin users. This Comment concludes by suggesting two interpretations of the Fund's incorporating document, the Articles of Agreement, that would allow it to intervene in the event of such an attack.