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From July 1940 until his death in April 1946, Keynes returned to the Treasury to work on wartime and post-war issues, including several visits to the USA between 1941 and 1946. Keynes contributed to the plans made for the post-war international order in three principal ways. First, he played a leading role in the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to maintain stable but adjustable exchange rates and facilitate balance of payments adjustment, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, or World Bank). Second, he negotiated the settlement of Britain’s Lend-Lease obligation to the USA, and a US loan to help Britain through its immediate post-war balance of payments difficulties. Third, he played a role in Anglo-American discussions resulting in publication of US proposals on trade and employment at the same time as the loan in December 1945. Arising from negotiations, these measures embodied, albeit imperfectly, Keynes’s liberal vision for the post-war international economy, especially his desire to lay an economic basis for a durable peace through ‘international government in economic affairs’ based on Anglo-American cooperation.

One of the least studied aspects of programs of reparation, both in theory and in practice, is financing. This is odd given the fact that mobilizing resources, both domestic and foreign, is politically one of the most difficult tasks any society can undertake. This paper centers on the subject of financing reparation programs and attempts to answer the following questions: Which factors play a role in the process of mobilizing domestic and foreign resources to finance reparations? Is financing solely a technical-economic problem, or does it involve political, social, and cultural factors? Why do governments prefer financing social programs instead of programs of reparation? How do the proposals made by truth commissions regarding financing affect the viability of programs of reparation? Which factors explain the efficacy of financing models of reparation programs? In order to address these questions, the paper has been divided into three main sections. In the first, programs of reparation are analyzed from the perspective of political economy, which means that both economic and non-economic factors that influence the mobilization of domestic and foreign resources by a transitional society are taken into consideration. The second section focuses on international experiences in the area of financing programs of reparation, with the purpose of extracting some lessons. The third section presents the main conclusions of the study.

Keynes was, in a phrase he frequently used, brought up to accept certain ideas that were central to the classical liberalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He worked in the British Treasury during the First World War to finance a war effort towards which he was increasingly hostile. He also contributed during and immediately after the war to British government thinking about how to treat the defeated enemy. But his ideas on this faced fierce resistance. This chapter traces the evolution of Keynes’s thinking on these and other issues to the end of 1918. It outlines aspects of Keynes’s thought on international issues before the First World War, especially how he was brought up to believe that free trade promoted peace; and his attitudes toward the Empire and population pressure; his approach to the First World War, conscription, and war finance; and the evolution of his thought on reparations to the end of 1918.

This chapter derives the dynamics of (the value of) a so-called self-financing portfolio; the price dynamics of various assets (e.g. stocks, bonds, financial derivatives) is considered as a given. A model is first studied in discrete time. The length of time is then tended to zero to obtain the continuous time analogs. A practice exercise is included.

Discussing the irrelevance of corporate finance to firm valuation, this chapter provides support for the assertion that the profitability of a business can only be the result of its underlying competitive advantage.

Shows how the Federalists responded to the Antifederalist objections to a stronger national government in the “fiscal‐military” sphere, thereby creating an understanding of the kind of state that was proper to American conditions. In the debate over ratification of the US Constitution there was little discussion about the exact way in which the Federalists intended to organize the revenue administration, but nevertheless, it is the argument of this chapter that with the important exception of the assumption of the state debts, the general outline of Hamiltonian public finance was in place in 1787, and widely shared by the supporters of the Constitution. Thus, the idea that the least oppressive tax was also the most productive, the claim that adoption of the Constitution would mean a change in the structure of taxation from direct to indirect taxes and a reliance on the impost (customs duties), and the ideal of the federal government as a “waterfront state” hardly noticed by the people, were all among the most important points made in Federalist rhetoric on the fiscal powers of the Constitution. In the ratifying debate, the Federalists presented a solution to the equation of how to create a sufficiently powerful government without making unacceptable demands on society: the federal government had the right to mobilize the full resources of society at will, but in peacetime it would keep a very low profile while assuming the payment of the union's debts and the cost of defense using money raised by taxation. This federal assumption of expenses that had earlier been carried by the states, and the mode of raising the taxes to pay for it ensured that overall taxation would not increase, as the Antifederalists claimed, but would become less burdensome to the majority of the people.

This chapter concludes the study by summarizing the existing evidence and by providing a list of topics for further research. The list includes issues, such as the effect of the two-stage “purchasing process” in credit markets on the estimated relationships; the development of loan conditions throughout the life-cycle of the bank; bank organization and its impact on competition; the geography of bank financing; the impact of technology on bank organization, banking geography, and banking activities; the role banks play in the development of emerging economies; the effects of monetary policy on bank behavior; the impact of the development of the regulatory and wider institutional framework on competition and bank rents; the interrelationships between social capital, trust, and the functioning of financial markets; and the causes of the banking crisis that started in August 2007 and the consequences on the development of banking products and banking in general.

This chapter considers policy issues. Given the potential benefits of soft innovation it is natural to consider whether government can speed up or extend such activity. However, this is not necessarily welfare desirable. The real issue concerns whether markets will or will not, unaided, produce the welfare optimal outcome. The literature considered shows that this question cannot be answered irrefutably in either direction. Market failure is thus not a strong ground on which to base policy intervention. Alternatively, international comparisons of soft innovation performance may be used by governments as a basis for policy. The chapter shows that the UK is not the international leader in soft innovation. Looking at returns to the Community Innovation Survey provides some insight into barriers to innovations and may be argued to support certain policy interventions. There is also only limited evidence on the potential effectiveness of policies.

This chapter addresses issues relating to risk and uncertainty, and particularly the choice between corporate innovation strategies of small numbers nurturing and letting a thousand flowers bloom. The financing of innovation is also discussed.

This chapter has two main objectives. First, it introduces the theoretical frameworks of institutional change and organizational survival to be utilized in later chapters to make sense of the development in financial politics. Second, it constructs possible scenarios regarding financial reforms by identifying the actors and deriving their preferences based on observed behavioral regularities. It shows how the starting assumption — that organizations seek survival — applies more broadly to actors in the political economy. These actors include political parties, bureaucratic agencies, firms, and interest groups. Through this process, the institutions in Japanese finance (the Convoy) and public policymaking (bureaupluralism) that prevailed until the first half of the 1990s are identified.

This chapter analyzes the operations of the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders (CFB) — an association of British investors holding bonds issued by foreign governments — between 1870 and 1913. It describes the coordination among creditors fostered by the CFB and evaluates its successes and failures. It is shown that a revamped creditor association might facilitate creditor coordination today and facilitate sovereign debt crisis resolution. The CFB may have had an easier time than a comparable body would have today.