This paper will discuss the role of derivative products in international capital flows, especially in providing a means of both reducing and enhancing market risks associated with given net flows. It will emphasize how derivatives can be used to evade risk-control or prudential regulation,...

When Stage III of EMU begins on January 1, 1999, member countries will irrevocably lock exchange rates, and interbank payments in euros will commence. Will the ensuing respite from Stage II instabilities be permanent or only the eye of the storm? Can Stage III itself be subject to an attack that...

In 1790, Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, initiated a program to refund the U.S. debt. Debt that had sold at 75% discount two years earlier would be refunded at par into new funded debt of the new federal government. All foreign indebtedness would be...

Speculative runs on asset price fixing schemes are most often attributed either to an inexplicable mass hysteria or to a sudden, unpredictable random disturbance. Such attribution places runs and panics outside of the realm of scientific inquiry. Alternatively, in this paper I define the notion...

This paper provides a detailed discussion of the real phenomena that materialized in the stabilization period which followed the German hyper-inflation. Significant real dislocations arose after the monetary reform; and these can be attributed to a government policy which subsidized heavy...