This is both a fascinating personal narrative of the often colorful warriors rebuilding a part of war-torn Yugoslavia, and a detailed inside look at how experts can stabilize a nation's currency and banking system. Written by an American who has led International Monetary Fund advisory missions to the central banks of more than twenty countries, this book, crafted in layman's language - but of immense value to specialists in monetary and foreign policy initiatives - is an account of the behind-the-headlines work American and other economists do to bring peace and prosperity to former failed states.Coats was involved in the creation of the Central Bank of Bosnia from before the Dayton Peace Accords. His "currency board" rules for monetary policy, and the creation of the bank, have resulted in the most successful state institution in the country.Marking the tenth anniversary of the bank, the technical world of economics comes alive as the book unfolds like a mystery novel full of colorful and determined people determined to escape the disaster of a bloody civil war.

This Technical Assistance (TA) report on Bosnia and Herzegovina highlights that the negative spread in a context of structural lower returns on foreign exchange reserves and sizable capital inflows has led to a gradual and steady erosion of the currency board coverage ratio. The Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CBBH) requested Technical Assistance to review its reserve requirement framework. The mission recommends aligning the remuneration of reserve requirements on foreign exchange liabilities to the CBBH’s opportunity cost. The mission also recommends prescribing the fulfilment in foreign currency of the reserve requirements for foreign currency liabilities. It also suggested altering the remuneration scheme of domestic reserve requirements. In order to be neutral from an intermediation perspective, the reserve requirement remuneration should be aligned to the market-neutral uncovered interest rate parity rate, whereas the remuneration of excess reserves may take place significantly below the market-neutral rate but at or above the foreign currency remuneration rate. The CBBH may benefit from a constructive dialogue with the Area Department or TA to set the new rates of remuneration of domestic reserve requirement and excess reserves.

Money has the power to make nations and fuel wars. It is both the subject of diplomacy and the tool of those seeking to overthrow hostile regimes at home and abroad. Germany's hyperinflation following the First World War has entered the public consciousness as an extreme example of what can happen to a currency in conflict. What is not widely known is that it is by no means the worst case of war-induced hyperinflation. Hostile Money looks at the impact of war and revolution on national currencies – from Rome's civil war in the first century BC to the twenty-first-century invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by American-led forces and the economic sanctions and cyberwarfare of today.

In February 2003, Biljana Plavsic, an ex-Bosnian-Serb leader, became the highest-ranking politician from the former Yugoslavia to be found guilty of war crimes. Her sentence of 11 years in prison is an important step in the reconciliation and rehabilitation process that has been hampered by reluctance on the part of governments and individuals to come forth and face war crimes indictments. The war in Bosnia ended in 1995 with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which created a two-tier government in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A multi-ethnic national government took charge of foreign and economic policy and two regional governments, the Bosniak/Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosnian Serb-led Republika Srpska, managed internal affairs. This new volume in the Nations in Transition series provides an in-depth look at the current situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country's ethnic conflict and its history, and the difficulties it faces in implementing the terms of the peace agreement. Comprehensive in scope, Bosnia and Herzegovina begins with an overview of the country's history, from Roman times to the present. In a style that is easy to understand, the book continues to examine the complicated government structure and diverse religious community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as its economic situation, culture, daily life, and major cities. An invaluable source of information for students and general readers, this volume is a great starting point for research on this still fragile democracy.

This book written by leading academics and practitioners in the field brings together cutting edge research on exchange rate regime and monetary union issues. There is a particular focus on the implications for member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) which is itself working towards forming a monetary union for the Gulf States. The relatively dramatic movements in the US dollar in the recent past, and also in the early 1990s, have called the practice of pegging to the US dollar into question for a group of countries that predominantly rely on hydrocarbons as their primary export. The book considers the key issues which must be addressed by the GCC in trying to form a monetary union for the Gulf countries and also the rigid pegging of member states currencies to the US dollar. The proposed monetary union raises clear issues in terms of the appropriateness of such a regime for these countries and whether, for example, the necessary institutional mechanisms are in place ahead of the proposed union. Currency Union and Exchange Rate Issues brings together the perspectives of a group of experts who focus on these important issues, and provide analysis of the policy options. Academics, policymakers and postgraduates in international finance will find much to consider and learn from in this informative book.

Bosnia and Herzegovina Investment and Business Guide Volume 1 Strategic and Practical Information

Provides visitors with information to explore this very different destination, including the special countryside attractions such as bird reserves and vineyards. This work is suitable for those planning an independent tour of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Offers an account of a man who started wars, whose rhetoric whipped up Serb nationalism to a frenzy of "ethnic cleansing" and yet who retained for a decade the ability to wrap the "international community" round his little finger.

Since the violent events of the Bosnian war and the revelations of ethnic cleansing that shocked the world in the early 1990s, Bosnia has become a metaphor for the new ethnic nationalisms, for the transformation of warfare in the post-Cold War era, and for new forms of peacekeeping and state-building. This book is unique in offering a re-examination of the Bosnian case with a 'bottom-up' perspective. It gathers together cultural anthropologists and other social scientists to consider the specificities of the Bosnian case. However, the book also raises broader questions: what are the consequences of internecine violence and how should societies attempt to overcome them? Are the uncertainties and the transformations of Bosnian post-war society due entirely to the war, or are they related to wider processes encompassing post-communist Europe as a whole? And are the difficulties experienced by international state-building operations mainly due to distinctive features of the local societies or are they due to the policies promoted by the international community itself?

This book explores the hypothesis of the emergence of a ‘dependent capitalism’ in Central and Eastern Europe. In a first theoretical part, this book presents the main approaches that structure the field of comparative capitalism and then examines this model shaped by the inflow of foreign capital. In an original way, it proposes to integrate the form of the monetary regime into the dependent capitalism analysis and to extend it to Balkan countries. The monetary regime is seen as complementary to the other elements of the institutional configuration of dependent capitalism. In the second part, the authors adopt a historical and empirical perspective. First, they demonstrate how dependent capitalism has emerged in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic States over the last 30 years as part of the process of socio-economic transformation that began in 1990. The crisis of 2008 was an indicator of this dependence on Western capital. Secondly, they extend the analysis to the Balkan countries and show that dependence is even stronger for them, particularly in the monetary area, as evidenced by the implementation of currency boards or euroization phenomena. This book is of interest to academics and students, as well as to business and economic policy makers.