A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. When the links in the chain represent development projects, if individual projects fail to achieve their purpose, the development program's effectiveness is compromised. When the chain's links are strong and well-connected, the results are improved for the sector, country, and region. The role of multilateral banks is crucial; they inform the impac…
This book is the first study to provide a comprehensive picture of the reality and structure of dollarization in Cambodia, which has been achieving rapid economic and financial development since the end of 1998, when full piece reigned over the kingdom. It uses the micro-level data collected through nationwide surveys conducted jointly by the National Bank of Cambodia and JICA Ogata Sadako Rese…
About 2.5 billion adults, just over half the world's adult population, lack bank accounts. If we are to realize the goal of extending banking and other financial services to this vast "unbanked" population, we need to consider not only such product innovations as microfinance and mobile banking but also issues of data accuracy, impact assessment, risk mitigation, technology adaptation, financia…
Experts analyze the recent emphasis on central communication as an additional policy and accountability device.In recent years central bankers have placed new emphasis on communication with financial markets and the general public. They have done this not only through the traditional channel of monetary policy pronouncements but also by increasing the quantity of information they make public. Y…
An examination of the debates on European Central Bank monetary policy, focusing on issues of transparency, credibility, and accountability and the effect of the ECB's decentralized structure.The adoption of the euro in 1999 by 11 member states of the European Union created a single currency area second in economic size only to the United States. The euro zone's monetary policy is now set by th…
Annotation Japan's financial institutions and policy underwent remarkable change in the past decade. The country began the 1990s with a heavily regulated financial system managed by an unchallenged Ministry of Finance and ended the decade with a Big Bang financial market reform, a complete restructuring of its regulatory financial institutions, and an independent central bank. These reforms hav…
This is the first broad cross-country assessment of the ties between financial structure--the mix of financial instruments, institutions, and markets in a given economy--and economic growth since Raymond Goldsmith's 1969 landmark study. Most studies focus on developed countries and compare bank-based and market-based systems. Debates over the relative merits of the two systems have relied on ca…
Central bank communication has evolved from secretiveness to transparency and accountability—from a reluctance to give out any information at all to the belief in communication as a panacea for effective policy. In this book, Otmar Issing, himself a former central banker, discusses the journey toward transparency in central bank communication. Issing traces the development of transparency, ex…
Japan's economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, and the country entered its famous “lost decade”—a period of stagnation and economic disruption that persisted until 2003. The current declines in global equity and real estate markets have eerie parallels to Japan's economic woes of the 1990s. If we are to avoid repeating Japan's experience on a global scale, we must understand what happe…
An examination of how the policy preferences of individual members of the Federal Open Market Committee are translated into monetary policy decisions.In many countries, monetary policy decisions are made by committees. In the United States, these decisions are made by the Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which consists of the seven members of the Board of Governors and th…