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The purpose of this study is to identify how the U.S. is responding to money laundering and what kind of problems arise while countering it, beginning with a detailed description of money laundering, its stages, typologies, impacts, and complications. Due to the broad nature of this subject only three main issues form the focal point of this study: problems concerning the banking industry and other financial organizations, problems resulting from the limitations of law enforcement agencies, and problems arising from the lack of cooperation between and within financial institutions and law enforcement agencies. Several probable solutions to the above problems are identified: Considering the financial industry, there are loopholes in the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and in other regulations that apply to the industry. Thus, there is a comparison of the Subjective Model vs. Objective Model in terms of reporting systems for financial organizations. On the law enforcement side, the priority is the need to update and upgrade their technology and investigation mechanisms in order not to fall behind the criminals. Finally, cooperation is something that can be achieved through mutual respect and understanding of the priorities of each side, which can be achieved by the creation of an upper agency of whose members represent both sides of the combat efforts.

The purpose of the study at hand is to follow up the suggestions in Winters's observations and Booth's thesis, and to examine both the extent and the nature of money and other financial considerations as these matters appear in the four most important novels of James's early period.

Thesis advisor: Peter N. Ireland / Thesis advisor: Susanto Basu / My dissertation analyzes U.S. consumers' use of money and credit as means of payment and, in the case of credit cards, as a device that aids inter-temporal consumption smoothing. Money demand has received little attention in the literature lately, especially when compared to earlier decades, but our work with Scott Schuh shows that the proliferation of the ways consumers can make payments has important implications for the demand for various liquid assets. Therefore, accurate estimates of the demand for liquid asset needs to take payment instrument adoption and use into account. Data collected by the Consumer Payments Research Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston provides a good starting point for such analysis, as shown in the first two chapters of the dissertation. The final chapter analyzes another aspect of consumer credit, namely, it's usefulness in smoothing income fluctuations. This model is interesting because for agents in the model to use credit for consumption smoothing it has to be defaultable. The default option, however, induces a moral hazard problem: The additional insurance from bankruptcy protection leads to lower precautionary saving than in a similar model with no credit (or, equivalently, with non-defaultable credit). In general equilibrium, however, this decrease in savings leads to a lower aggregate capital stock and hence wages. In the calibration, the introduction of unsecured consumer credit results in a significant welfare loss in the economy as a whole. The first chapter, joint with Scott Schuh, estimates U.S. consumers' demand for cash using a new panel micro data for 2008--2010, employing econometric methodology similar to that in Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin (2000); Attanasio et al. (2002); and Lippi and Secchi (2009). We extend the Baumol-Tobin model to allow for credit card payments and revolving debt, as in Sastry (1970). With interest rates near zero, cash demand by consumers using credit cards for convenience (without revolving debt) has the same small, negative, interest elasticity as estimated in earlier periods and with broader money measures. However, cash demand by consumers using credit cards to borrow (with revolving debt) is interest inelastic. These findings have implications for the welfare cost of inflation because the nontrivial share of consumers who revolve credit card debt are less likely to switch from cash to credit. Our estimation also shows that accounting for the heterogeneous transactions costs that consumers face, when getting cash from bank and nonbank sources, is essential to identify cash demand properly. The second chapter, also joint with Scott Schuh, looks at consumers' demand for transactions balances at an even more granular level than the first chapter. Using the 2012 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (DCPC), we first document the substantial changes in payment instrument use of U.S. households compared to the results in Klee (2008) (which were based on data from 2001): Checks have virtually disappeared from purchase transactions, while still play a role in bill payments. Cash, on the other hand, still plays a large role for low-value transactions. Then we proceed to jointly analyze payment instrument use and consumers' demand for liquid assets. Results indicate that payment instrument choice is an integral part of consumers' cash management practices and hence cash demand; therefore, contrary to simple Baumol-Tobin models, they should be analyzed together. The final chapter in the dissertation is admittedly different from the previous two. While credit cards, more precisely unsecured consumer credit, is still the object of the analysis; the main focus is not on its role in settling transactions but on its role in inter-temporal consumption smoothing. In particular, the unsecured nature of credit card loans enable households to smooth consumption even in the face of large income disruptions, since bankruptcy protection provides them a way out of the mounting debt burden if their income stream deteriorates for too long. In fact, consumer defaults in the United States are counter-cyclical, suggesting that households use bankruptcy protection as a way to smooth consumption in the face of aggregate shocks. This chapter analyses the value of the option to default in a computable general equilibrium model similar to Krusell and Smith (1998). Model simulations show that unsecured borrowing helps the poorest consumers maintain a more stable consumption path when compared to an economy without bankruptcy and hence borrowing. For the economy as a whole, this utility gain, however, is offset by the effects of a declining average wage, resulting from a smaller aggregate capital stock, as consumers are less inclined to self-insure against income shocks in the presence of the option to default. This hits asset-poor households in the middle of the wealth distribution. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Balancing Act is a card matching game for 2 players that aims to inform players about basic money management principles. The purpose of the game is to educate players on different money management concepts in a fun and engaging manner. This paper will discuss the story of Balancing Act, the development of the game, and how the design of the game seeks to inform the player of its purpose. It will also include a post mortem that details the challenges of developing both a board and card version of the game, the overall outcomes of the project, and future directions for the game.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences / I thought a Euro coin would be a good main character for my story, the perfect medium to go everywhere and traverses social strata, gender and culture. The story and character are a pretext to visit different European countries, following the uncontrolled trip of the coin from one’s pocket to someone else’s wallet. Through the point of view of the coin, we are able to apprehend slices of daily life in Europe, of the actual state of the unity of the countries, at different levels, political, administrative and cultural. Through the coin’s experiences we see the reactions of ordinary people to the new currency: resentment of the way Europe is changing, indifference to whatever may occur, or the feeling that idealistic values are in danger when facing Kafkaesque bureaucratic decisions or the fact that 380 combinations are needed to translate every speech in every language of the Union. I chose a low-value coin rather than a banknote, because of its greater insignificance. A five cents coin comes and goes. The novel is also a reflection on money, its power, the triumph of capitalism in countries formerly communists or socialists and examine if this power is a “necessary evil” or a human weakness that needs to be reformed if possible. The novel is written using literary constraints, so the theoretical component of the thesis presents a short history of constraints as they have been explored, analysed and put in practice by OuLiPo (A Primer of Potential Literature) and authors like Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau or Christian Bök. Some of the constraints I used were unexpected like the use of daily News Agencies news (Reuters, AFP) dealing with Europe and the E.U. that I discovered and incorporated in the story while writing it. I believe that constraints can trigger creativity. The strategies I used while writing have been identified, analysed and categorized, as well as the solutions I found to sometimes overcome these constraints and keeping the novel readable and consistent.

<p>This essay analyzes how issues related to money and social class are presented in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. The method used will be a close reading as well as aspects of Marxist literary criticism, a theory that will be presented in the second chapter. Background information about the author and her time will then be given in the third chapter. In chapter four, the character of Sir Walter Elliot will be analyzed, in chapter five Elizabeth Elliot, and in chapter six William Elliot. Some of the other characters will be analyzed, more briefly, in the seventh chapter. Conclusions will then be drawn in the eighth and final chapter.</p>

This essay analyzes how issues related to money and social class are presented in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. The method used will be a close reading as well as aspects of Marxist literary criticism, a theory that will be presented in the second chapter. Background information about the author and her time will then be given in the third chapter. In chapter four, the character of Sir Walter Elliot will be analyzed, in chapter five Elizabeth Elliot, and in chapter six William Elliot. Some of the other characters will be analyzed, more briefly, in the seventh chapter. Conclusions will then be drawn in the eighth and final chapter.

The history of money has always been intertwined with the history of banking. Nevertheless, very few papers have studied banking in a rigorous monetary environment. This thesis demonstrates that it is crucial to integrate these two literatures. I present three theories of money and banking, each generating results that are drastically different from those of the traditional banking models without microfoundations for money. Chapter 1 addresses the problem of monitoring the monitor in a model with private information and aggregate uncertainty. There is no need to monitor a bank if it requires loans to be repaid partly with money. A market arises at the repayment stage and generates information-revealing prices that perfectly discipline the bank. The mechanism also applies when multiple banks exist. With multiple banks, a prohibition on private money issuing not only eliminates welfare-improving money competition but also triggers free-rider problems among banks. In Chapter 2, I develop a dynamic model to address the following question: when both individuals and banks have private information, what is the optimal way to settle debts? I establish two main results: first, markets can improve upon the optimal dynamic contract in the presence of private information. Prices fully reveal the aggregate states and help solve the incentive problem of the bank. Secondly, it is optimal for the bank to require loans to be settled with short-term inside money, i.e., bank money that expires immediately after debt settlement. Short-term inside money makes it less costly to induce truthful revelation and achieves more efficient risk sharing. Chapter 3 studies bank runs in a model with coexistence of fiat money and private money. When fiat money is the only medium of exchange, a bank run equilibrium coexists with an equilibrium that achieves optimal risk sharing. In contrast, when private money is also a medium of exchange, there exists a unique equilibrium where no one demands early withdrawals of fiat money and agents in need of liquidity only use private money to finance consumption. This unique equilibrium achieves the first-best outcome and eliminates bank runs without having to resort to any government intervention.