Economic cycles are driven by financial flows, namely quantities of savings and credits, and not by high street inflation or interest rates. Their sweeping destructive powers are expressed through Global Liquidity, a $130 trillion pool of footloose cash. Global Liquidity describes the gross flows of credit and international capital feeding through the world’s banking systems and wholesale money markets. The huge jump in the volume of international financial markets since the mid-1980s has been boosted by deregulation, innovation and easy money, with financial globalisation now surpassing the peaks of integration reached before the First World War. Global Liquidity drives these markets: it is often determinant, frequently disruptive and always fast-moving. Barely one fifth of Wall Street’s huge gains over recent decades have come from earnings: rising liquidity and investors’ appetite for riskier financial assets have propelled stock prices higher. Similar experiences are shared worldwide and even in emerging markets, such as India, flat earnings have not deterred waves of foreign money and domestic mutual funds from driving-up stock prices. Now with central banks actively pursuing quantitative easing policies, industrial corporations flush with cash and rising wealth levels among emerging market investors, the liquidity theory of investment has never been more important. International spill-overs of these rapacious cross-border flows sets off capital wars and exposes the unattractive face of liquidity called ‘risk.’ As the world grows bigger, it becomes ever more volatile. From the early 1960s onwards, the world economy and its financial markets have suffered from three broad types of shocks – labour costs, oil and commodities, and global liquidity. Financial markets spin on fragile axes and the absence of liquidity often provides a warning of upcoming troubles. Global Liquidity is a much-discussed, but narrowly-researched and vaguely-defined topic. This book deeply explores the subject by clearly defining and measuring liquidity worldwide and by showing its importance for investors. The roles of central banks, shadow banking, the rise of Repo and growth of wholesale money are discussed. Additionally, covering the latest developments in China’s increasingly dominant financial economy, this book will appeal to practitioners, policy-makers, economists and academics, as well as those with a general interest in how financial markets work.

This book discusses the risks and opportunities that arise in Emerging Asia given the context of a new environment in global liquidity and capital flows. It elaborates on the need to ensure financial and overall economic stability in the region through improved financial regulation and other policy measures to minimize the emergent risks. "Managing Elevated Risk: Global Liquidity, Capital Flows, and Macroprudential Policy—An Asian Perspective" also explores the range of policy options that may be deployed to address the impact of global liquidity on domestic financial and socio-economic conditions including income inequality. The book is primarily aimed at policy makers, financial market regulators and supervisory agencies to help them improve national regulatory systems and to promote harmonization of national regulations and practices in line with global standards. Scholars and researchers will also gain important information and knowledge about the overall impacts of changing global liquidity from the book.

This paper examines how the financial activities of non-financial corporates (NFCs) in international markets potentially affects domestic monetary aggregates and financial conditions. Monetary aggregates reflect, in part, the activities of NFCs, who channel capital market financing into the domestic banking system, thereby influencing funding conditions and credit availability. Periods of capital inflows are also those when the domestic currency is appreciating, and such periods of rapid exchange rate appreciation coincide with increases in the central bank’s foreign exchange reserves, increasing the stock of narrow money. The paper examines economic significance of cross-country panel data on monetary aggregates and other measures of non-core bank liabilities. Non-core liabilities that reflect the activities of NFCs reflect broad credit conditions and predict global trade and growth.

This book presents the Clarendon Lectures in Finance by one of the leading exponents of financial booms and crises. Hyun Song Shin's work has shed light on the global financial crisis and he has been a central figure in the policy debates. The paradox of the global financial crisis is that it erupted in an era when risk management was at the core of the management of the most sophisticated financial institutions. This book explains why. The severity of the crisis is explained by financial development that put marketable assets at the heart of the financial system, and the increased sophistication of financial institutions that held and traded the assets. Step by step, the lectures build an analytical framework that take the reader through the economics behind the fluctuations in the price of risk and the boom-bust dynamics that follow. The book examines the role played by market-to-market accounting rules and securitisation in amplifying the crisis, and draws lessons for financial architecture, financial regulation and monetary policy. This book will be of interest to all serious students of economics and finance who want to delve beneath the outward manifestations to grasp the underlying dynamics of the boom-bust cycle in a modern financial system - a system where banking and capital market developments have become inseparable.

This update of the guidelines published in 2001 sets forth the underlying framework for the Reserves Data Template and provides operational advice for its use. The updated version also includes three new appendices aimed at assisting member countries in reporting the required data.

This volume provides an analysis of the global monetary system and proposes a comprehensive yet evolutionary reform of the system aimed at creating better monetary cooperation for the twenty-first century.

Two leading economists develop a theory explaining the demand for and supply of liquid assets. Why do financial institutions, industrial companies, and households hold low-yielding money balances, Treasury bills, and other liquid assets? When and to what extent can the state and international financial markets make up for a shortage of liquid assets, allowing agents to save and share risk more effectively? These questions are at the center of all financial crises, including the current global one. In Inside and Outside Liquidity, leading economists Bengt Holmström and Jean Tirole offer an original, unified perspective on these questions. In a slight, but important, departure from the standard theory of finance, they show how imperfect pledgeability of corporate income leads to a demand for as well as a shortage of liquidity with interesting implications for the pricing of assets, investment decisions, and liquidity management. The government has an active role to play in improving risk-sharing between consumers with limited commitment power and firms dealing with the high costs of potential liquidity shortages. In this perspective, private risk-sharing is always imperfect and may lead to financial crises that can be alleviated through government interventions.

This cutting-edge volume brings together a range of leading academics and market practitioners to help you define, understand and measure liquidity risk and 'liquidity black holes'.

This book explores the effect of liquidity on asset prices, liquidity variations over time and how liquidity risk affects prices.