BSP sees peso to remain strong.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) expects the peso to stay strong this year, and expressed doubts that capital controls or pegging the exchange rate will stop the currency's appreciation against the US dollar. The monetary authority also dismissed suggestions it has heavily intervened in the market...

The IMF: victim of its own success or institutional failure?
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), created at the end of the Second World War at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to manage an international monetary system characterized by fixed exchange rates and heavily restricted international capital flows, now faces widespread questioning of its relevance. Calls for its abolition are not...

Preventing currency crises: the currency board versus the currency principle.
JEL Classifications: E32; E58; O23 Keywords: currency crisis; currency board; central bank; IMF; emerging markets; Asian crisis; Hong Kong INTRODUCTION The institution of the currency board began to gain increasing favor among mainstream economists in the mid-1990's because of its apparent success in...

Foreign direct investment in the Middle East: major regulatory restrictions.
This article focuses on the comparative analysis of major regulatory restrictions on foreign investment in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, countries that are representative of the Muslim Middle East: the Egyptian legal system has served as a pattern for many of the Middle Eastern countries, Shari'a is the primary...

Macroeconomic Policies for EU Accession.
Edited by Erdem Bascu, Subidey Togan and Jurgen von Hagen Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2007, 340 pp., $145, ISBN 978-1847200006 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The 1990s were a lost decade for the Turkish economy. There were coalition governments, and insecurities that led to taking numerous...

An analysis of forex market intervention: evidence from India.
Reserve bank of India occasionally intervenes in the foreign exchange market to curtail the exchange rate volatility. The nature of intervention by the RBI in the spot and forward segment of the forex market has always been with a purpose (either implicit or explicit) and sometimes on a continuous...

From Franco to freedom: reflections on getting reacquainted with Spain.
IN THIS YEAR'S northern spring, I indulged myself in the pleasure of returning for a while to Spain, where I had squandered many marvellous months of my youth in the early 1960s. That was when Franco Spain had emerged from the traumas of the Civil War (1936-39), the isolation...

Maceoeconomics policies for EU accession.
9781847200006 Maceoeconomics policies for EU accession. Ed. by Erdem Basci et al. Edward Elgar Publishing 2007 340 pages $145.00 Hardcover HC492 As Turkey takes steps to qualify for full membership in...

Financial developments in India: should India introduce capital account convertibility?
Abstract The objective of this paper is to examine whether India has reached a stage of financial development when full capital account convertibility could be introduced. The issue is important because in the aftermath of the Asian and other developing countries crises, there has been some rethink...

BSP keeps key rates unchanged.
The Monetary Board, the central bank's highest policy-making body, kept the overnight borrowing rate at 7.50 percent and the overnight lending rate at 9.75 percent during their regular interest ratesetting meeting yesterday, saying inflationary pressures remain in check. Overnight rates were last raised on Oct. 20, by 25 basis...