The current practice of central banks lending gold to gold producers allows the gold leasing rate to be derived from published data. Gold leasing rates, a potential measure of real world interest rates, are calculated and compared with real interest rates derived from U.K. index-linked gilts....

Is the exchange rate expectation formation process rational? This age old question is looked at with survey data on exchange rate expectations at multiple forecast horizons. This helps to circumvent the risk premium issue and isolate the exchange rate expectational rationality factor. The...

Using grass-roots-level data, this article analyzes factors that contribute to the current backwardness of the Uzbek banking sector. The study attempts to show that despite considerable progress achieved in terms of modernizing payments systems, embracing international accounting standards, and...

The foreign exchange market efficiency hypothesis is revisited using the modern Phillips-Hansen Fully Modified Ordinary Least squares (FM-OLS) procedure. It corrects for both endogeneity in the data and asymptotic bias in the coefficient estimates. The volatile decade of the 1980s is the chosen...

The purchasing power parity hypothesis is investigated within a highly economically integrated set of nations, namely the European Monetary System (EMS). The modern Phillips-Hansen Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FM-OLS) procedure is used, which for the first time allows for an...

The concept of rural transportation planning has changed over the years. Nowadays a needs-based approach is generally used where the accessibility of the population to the activity centres or services is given more emphasis than the earlier concept of only the construction of motorable roads. In...