Global Capital Markets

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

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 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).

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.