With the adoption of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) of the Inflation Targeting (IT) framework in 2002, average inflation went down in the past decade from historical average. However, the BSP’s inflation targets were breached several times since 2002. Against this backdrop, this paper...

This paper proposed a new optimal design of Early Warning Systems (EWS) to detect early warning signals of an impending financial crisis. The problem of EWS was formulated from a policy maker's perspective. Hence the probability threshold was obtained by minimizing the policy maker's welfare...

The paper presents an econometric study of the two bank ratings assigned by Moody's Investors Service. According to Moody’s methodology, foreign-currency long-term deposit ratings are assigned on the basis of Bank Finan-cial Strength Ratings (BFSR), taking into account “external bank support...

Asia’s financial crisis in July 1997 affects currency, capital market, and real market throughout Asian countries. Countries in southeast region (ASEAN), including Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, are some of the countries where the crisis hit the most. In these...

In this chapter we provide a brief review of the “signals” approach used in this book to assess the probability of a currency or a banking crisis. This methodology was first used to analyze the performance of a variety of macroeconomic and financial indicators around the “twin crises” in...

This paper combines artificial neural networks (ANN), fuzzy optimization and time-series econometric models in one unified framework to form a hybrid intelligent early warning system (EWS) for predicting economic crises. Using quarterly data on 12 macroeconomic and financial variables for the...

Discussions of health care reforms are always tightly connected with the question of ensuring equity in financing health care. This paper analyses the German health care reform 2007 and its effect on the equity of health care financing. To do this Rawls’ and Nozick’s perceptions of justice...

This paper examines structural change in the power and heat producing sector (energy supply) and its implications for the economy. An integrated approach is used to describe the interactions between this sector and the rest of the economy. Thus, a very detailed model of the sector for Denmark...

According to financial theory, corporate hedging can increase shareholder value in the presence of capital market imperfections such as direct and indirect costs of financial distress, costly external financing, and taxes. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the extensive existing...