Threats To International Financial Stability

The potential fragility of the international financial and monetary system has been highlighted by international debt crises as well as by rapid financial innovation and regulatory changes.

The latest book published by CEPR, in collaboration with the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies (ICMBS) in Geneva, is therefore particularly timely. Edited by Richard Portes, Director of CEPR, and Alexander K Swoboda, Director of the ICMBS, it is based on a September 1986 conference held by the ICMBS in association with CEPR in Geneva.

The conference brought together a leading group of economists, financial theorists, policy-makers and bankers to analyse current threats to international financial stability. The papers are written by academics; they are discussed by practitioners, including bank supervisors and regulators and central and private bankers, among them Robert Bench (US), Lionel Price (UK), Peter Schmid (FRG), and Shijuro Ogata (Japan).

Contributors include:

Barry Eichengreen and Richard Portes on The Anatomy of Financial Crises
Ernst Baltensperger and Jean Dermine on The Role of Public Policy in Ensuring Financial Stability: A Cross-Country, Comparative Perspective
Stephen M Schaefer on The Design of Bank Regulation and Supervision: Some Lessons from the Theory of Finance
Edward J Kane on Competitive Financial Reregulation: An International Perspective
Jack Guttentag and Richard Herring on Emergency Liquidity Assistance for International Banks
Anthony Saunders on The Interbank Market, Contagion Effects and International Financial Crises
Markus Lusser on Policy and Financial Innovation: Will There Be a Switch from Deregulation to Reregulation?

The book also contains six studies, describing the recent experiences of policy-makers in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, Argentina and Finland. A concluding panel discussion, featuring leading practitioners such as Sam Cross and Christine Downton, discusses the problems of containing financial crises. Joan Pearce also provides a comprehensive summary of the exchanges of ideas among academics and policy-makers which were a highlight of the conference. The volume will interest all those concerned with the world's financial system.

Threats to International Financial Stability is available from Cambridge University Press in hardcover (ISBN 0 521 34556 1) at £27.50/$42.50 and in paperback (ISBN 0 521 34789 O) at £9.95/$16.95. Orders should be placed with CUP: a form is enclosed with this issue of the Bulletin.