Global Capital Markets

This book presents an economic history of international capital mobility in the modern era. It blends narrative and quantitative methods and connects economic outcomes to the underlying political economy of international macroeconomics. The volume demonstrates that the recent globalization can be seen, in part, as the resumption of a liberal world order that had previously been established in the years 1880-1914, but also points out that much is different in terms of its causes and consequences.

Most succinct, up-to-date analysis available of global capital markets, hot topic
Senior author, world-class scholar, internationally renowned
Rich in historical perspective, clearly written, no math, just figures and tables

Reviews & endorsements

Overall, Global Capital Markets is an excellent study of the evolution of international capital markets since the classical gold standard period. This book is a must read for economists and economic historians with an interest in international economics. EH.NET

"Maurice Obstfeld and Alan Taylor have written a wonderful book that raises the academic bar...it is a coherent and comprehensive assessment covering all the issues...In short, there is no book out there to challenge the GCM and it should remain the market leader for some time to come."
Jeffrey G. Williamson, Journal of Economic Literature

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Product details

Published: March 2004
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 9780521633178
Length: 374 pages
Dimensions: 229 × 152 × 25 mm
Weight: 0.72kg
Availability: Available

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Contents

Part I. Preamble
Section 1. Global Capital Markets: Overview and Origins:
1. Theoretical benefits
2. Problems of supernational capital markets in practice
3. The emergence of world capital markets
4. The trilemma: capital mobility, the exchange rate, and monetary policy
Part II. Global Capital in Modern Historical Perspective
Section 2. Globalization in Capital Markets: Quantity Evidence:
5. The stocks of foreign capital
6 The size of international flows
7. The saving-investment relationship
8. Caveats: quantity criteria
Section 3. Globalization in Capital Markets: Price Evidence:
9. Real interest rate convergence
10. Exchange-risk free nominal interest parity
11. Purchasing power parity
12. Caveats: price criteria
13. Summary
Part III. The Political Economy of Capital Mobility
Section 4. Globalization in Capital Markets: A Long-Run Narrative:
14. Capital without constraints: the gold standard, 1870–1931
15. Crisis and compromise: depression and war, 1931–46
16. Containment then collapse: Bretton Woods, 1946–71
17. Crisis and compromise II: the floating era, 1971–99
18. Measuring financial integration using data on legal restrictions
Section 5. The Trilemma in History:
19. Methodology
20. Data sources
21. Stationarity of nominal interest rates
22. Empirical findings: pooled annual differences
23. Empirical findings: individual-country dynamics
24. Conclusion
Section 6. Sovereign Risk, Credibility and the Gold Standard:
25. Five suggestive cases
26. Econometric analysis
27. Conclusion
Part IV. Lessons for Today
Section 7. Uneven Rewards:
28. Foreign capital stocks: net versus gross
29. Foreign capital flows: rich versus poor
30. Foreign capital stocks: rich versus poor
31. Then: has foreign capital always been biased to the rich?
32. Now: have poor countries really liberalized their markets?
33. Variations in the types of capital flows
34. Summary
Section 8. Uneven Risks:
35. Open markets, crises and volatility
36. Crises, controls and economic performance
37. Contagion and self-fulfilling crises
38. Market failure, government failure and policy choices.

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Authors

Maurice Obstfeld , University of California, Berkeley
Maurice Obstfeld is the Class of 1958 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His interests are in international finance and macroeconomics, areas in which he has published numerous research articles. Professor Obstfeld received his Ph.D. from MIT and later taught at Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard before moving to Berkeley. He has served as a consultant for the IMF, World Bank, European Commission, and several central banks. With Kenneth Rogoff, he is the author of Foundations of International Macroeconomics (1996). He is also the author, together with Paul Krugman, of International Economics: Theory and Policy, which has been translated into several foreign languages. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London), and a Fellow of the Econometric Society.
Alan M. Taylor , University of California, Davis
Alan M. Taylor is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis, where he holds a Chancellor's Fellowship through to 2006. He previously taught at Northwestern University. Professor Taylor's research has been published in leading journals such as the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Econometrica, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Political Economy, International Economic Review, and the Journal of Economic History. A Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, he is the recipient of the 2000 Arthur H. Cole Prize (with G. della Paolera) and the 1993 Alexander Gerschenkron Prize. Professor Taylor coedited the collection Globalization in Historical Perspective (with M. D. Bordo and J. G. Williamson, 2005) and coauthored the 2001 Straining at the Anchor: The Argentine Currency Board and the Search for Macroeconomic Stability, 1880–1935 (with G. della Paolera).

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