Perspective on financial crises

Financial crises ; Monetary policy

Monetary policy transmission: past and future challenges

Distinguished address for a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York called Financial Innovation and Monetary TransmissionMonetary policy ; Interest rates

The contributions and limitations of "monetary" analysis

During Voicker's presidency, the role of monetary aggregates as a guide to policy came under increasing public discussion. In this speech, Voicker discusses the advantages and pitfalls of a strategy of targeting monetary aggregates and alternative operating procedures. He argues that monetary targeting imposes a beneficial discipline on Federal Reserve policies. He also notes, however, that instability in velocity over horizons relevant for policy and the possibility of credit market disturbances make attention to other sources of information imperative.Monetary policy ; Velocity of money ; Money supply ; Volcker, Paul A. ; Federal Reserve System - History

Laval 1931 : a diplomatic study

This thesis sheds light on a hitherto neglected chapter in the life of Pierre Laval, one of France\u27s most controversial political figures in the twentieth century. Widely remembered as Vice-Premier (Vice-President du Conseil des Ministres) of the Vichy government during World War II, Laval is less known as the premier (President du Conseil des Ministres) who attempted to solve the grave financial and diplomatic dilemmas dividing France, Great Britain, the United States, and Germany in 1931. In that year, he engaged in one last grand diplomatic effort, before Adolf Hitler came to power, traveling to London, Berlin and Washington, D.C., in order to solve the issues of the international war debt, the world economic crisis, and the rise of nationalism in Germany

Antitrust and Law Update: Interesting Times for IP Holders in Europe, the Implications of Microsoft and IMS Health

On March 24th 2004, the European Commission issued its long awaited Microsoft decision, which has now been published on its Website.1 On April 29th 2004, the Court of Justice handed down its judgment in the IMS Health case.2 Both decisions have important implications for all companies with valuable IP portfolios that do business in the European Union. Although these decisions are arguably not revolutionary given the existing legal framework for dominant companies set out in Article 82 EC, they illustrate that EC competition law sometimes strikes a different balance than US antitrust law between spurring innovation by protecting IP rights and promoting competition in innovation-driven markets

Mind The Gap: Unilateral Effects Analysis Arrives in EC Merger Control

With the adoption of a new substantive test in the revised Merger Regulation, and the publication of the European Commission\u27s Guidelines on the assesment of horizontal mergers, unilateral effects analysis is poised to become an integral part of merger review in the European Union. Notwithstanding the Commission\u27s insistence on a European terminology ( non-coordinated rather than unilateral effects), the EC thus embraces a concept that has gained substantial traction in the United States since its explicit recognition in the 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines as one variant of a substantial lessening of competition (SLC) under s.7 of the Clayton Act. This is an interesting development given that only a year ago, the Commission was --at least publicly-- still very hesitant to recommend any departure from the traditional dominance test in order to bring the EC merger regime closer to the US SLC test. This article discusses the likely impact of the inclusion of unilateral effects analysis in EC merger control. First, it gives a general introduction to unilateral effects analysis, and illustrates the tentative differences in approach when compared with the traditional dominance test on the basis of a concrete example. Secondly, the article examines merger cases in which the Commission has already undertaken a unilateral-effects type analysis under the guise of the traditional dominance concept. Thirdly, the articles describes the inclusion of unilateral effects analysis into the Merger Regulation and the EC Horizontal Merger Guidelines, and briefly recalls the debate preceding these changes. Fourthly, building on the above considerations, the article discusses the possible impact of the introduction of unilateral effects analysis on the conduct and outcome of EC merger control proceedings

Net neutrality and high‑speed broadband networks: evidence from OECD countries

Network neutrality regulations are intended to preserve the Internet as a non-discriminatory, public network and an open platform for innovation. Whereas the U.S. reversed its regulations in 2017, returning to a less strict regime, the EU has maintained its course and recently revised implementation guidelines for its strict and rather interventionist net neutrality regulations. To this day, there exist only a few empirical investigations on the impact of network neutrality regulations, based on rather broad measures of investment activities for individual countries. Our paper provides the first estimation results on the causal impact of net neutrality regulations on new high-speed (fiber-optic cable-based) infrastructure investment by Internet service providers. We use a comprehensive and most recent OECD panel data set for 32 countries for the period from 2000 to 2021 covering the entire high-speed broadband network deployment period. We employ various panel estimation techniques, including instrumental variables estimation. Our empirical analysis is based on theoretical underpinnings derived from a simplified model in a two-sided market framework. We find empirical evidence that net neutrality regulations exert a significant and strong negative impact on fiber investments. Our results suggest that, while we cannot provide evidence on the overall welfare consequences of net neutrality, imposing strict net neutrality regulations clearly slow down the deployment of new fiber-based broadband connections

Globalization and the World of Finance

Paul Volcker addresses issues of global finance--particularly fluctuations of the value of emerging-country currencies. Full participation in the world of global finance simply isn't consistent with independent monetary policies by independent nations. Countries should work toward greater stability among major currencies by setting boundaries for fluctuations. This would be done through direct market intervention and central bank policy coordination. The aim would be to avoid the extreme fluctuations that bear on relationship to differentials in interest rates or inflation rates or to more fundamental shifts in competitiveness. This would allow emerging countries to live more comfortably with freedom of international capital movements. This article is the annual Hutchinson Lecture at the University of Delaware.Global; Globalization