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This thesis presents six essays relating to various aspects of the workings of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System (EMS), an adjustable-peg exchange rate regime that has been in operation in Europe since 1979. The essays follow its development, from its inception in 1979, to its near collapse in 1992, and its current prospects in the context of economic and monetary union. The essays focus on several aspects of the EMS, notably volatility of exchange rates, offshore interest rates and forward exchange rates, the target zone model, time-series analysis of exchange rate changes, and how the EMS fits in with current plans for economic and monetary union in Europe.

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The recent growth of exchanges has generated large trading platforms for investors. The largest of these institutions, the Intercontinental Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange group are now responsible for clearing trades for the majority of investors worldwide and are perhaps, as large commercial banks are, too big to fail. This has attracted attention from international regulating bodies to impose strict risk management standards on the exchanges to ensure financial stability. In this thesis, we identify first, that an investor in the market is strongly affected by margins set by the exchanges in determining the transaction costs of a trade. We discuss the possibility that a volatile margin movement would introduce further risks for such an investor causing them to raise more capital to cover possible margin calls which can perhaps lead to procyclicality. We follow this work by addressing how margins can be determined in adherence to the new laws. Exchanges are now required to set margins based on the Value-at-Risk, hence we search for the best Value-at-Risk method for margining use. Here, we find that the simple Orthogonal Exponentially Weighted Moving Average method is sufficient in forecasting the Value-at-Risk, which contradicts a fair body of the literature who suggests that complex developments of GARCH are superior. We then offer methods for setting and evaluating margin requirements upon the Value-at-Risk estimates, concentrating on producing stable margin requirements. The automated methods produced in our work outperform all other methods available in the literature. Furthermore, we are the first to provide methods for assessing margin stability. Our work is timely in addressing the current affairs of the world economy and is among the first to tackle the margin stability issue in detail.

A logical control extension surrounding cashless means of exchange is a permanent personal verification mark. An implanted micro chip such as ones that have been successfully implanted into humans could identify and store information. Connected with global positioning satellites and a computer system, a cashless monetary system could be formed in the future. The system would provide complete and continual real time records for individuals, businesses and regulators. It would be possible for all trading to occur in this way in the future. A modified Technology Acceptance Model was developed based on Davis' (1989) model and Fishbein and Ajzen's (1975) theory to test the acceptance level of the new monetary system by professional accountants in Australia. The model includes perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived risk, and a subjective norm component. 523 accountants were surveyed in December 2003 with a response rate of 27%. 13% either strongly agree d or agreed that they would accept the implantable chip. The analysis showed that Perception of Risk, Subjective Norm and Perception of Usefulness were all significant in explaining the dependent variable at the 95% confidence level. The Perception of Ease of Use was not proved to be significant. In consideration of response bias, it was found that with respect to the perception of usefulness at the 0.01 level, two elements were not significant, those being

The United States acted unilaterally to terminate the Bretton Woods monetary system in August 1971, and international exchange rate management went from a regime of fixed to floating parities, much to the displeasure of the membership of the European Community. The Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations adopted policies that heavily benefited U.S. reform objectives and domestic economic goals, which frequently clashed with allied concerns, and damaged American monetary relations with France and West Germany. Yet, the inability of France and the Federal Republic of Germany to form cohesive economic and monetary policies throughout international negotiations or within the European Community (EC), allowed American desires to dictate the path and pace of European integration. France and Germany attempted, with limited success, to influence U.S. monetary policy through bilateral diplomacy during years of exchange rate fluctuations, dollar devaluations, oil shocks, and payments deficits. Finally, President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt created the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1979, reversing the trend of half-hearted attempts at European integration so relevant the decade before. The EMS detached the EC's currencies from the dollar's control, was compatible with the reformed international monetary system, advanced a more independent European monetary identity, and formed the base for future monetary integration. As a result, the EMS, as the birthplace of the Euro, the single European currency launched in 2002, may soon rival the dollar's position as the primary reserve currency. American monetary policies designed to improve the health of the dollar during the 1970s were a catalyst for European integration. However, as the European Union deepens its economic integration and the Euro grows in strength, it seems that U.S. policies created a regime and a currency that will challenge its dominant position in international monetary affairs.

In the first chapter, I analyze the impact of changes in aggregate holding in special asset purchase programs by Federal Reserve Systems (FED) as an alternate monetary policy at aggregate level. Later, to complement the analysis of monetary impact at aggregate level, I also analyze the impact of monetary actions at bank stock level with a set of 186 banks. First, for the overall sample period, expected monetary shock has positive effect on bank stock return; however, unexpected shock component has otherwise negative impact. Second, during both conventional and QE regime, monetary shocks are not significant in explaining weekly stock returns; however change in FED’s total asset holding in special programs is significant during the QE regime and such findings are more robust for the “large” banks when compared to “medium” and “small” banks. The second chapter presents the second essay that is one of the early studies to analyze whether either the changes in accounting standard or the changes in prudential regulatory regimes may affect the bank earning management in terms of Loan Loss Provisioning (LLP) systematically. Results suggest that, in general, bank managers use LLP as a tool for earning management for income smoothing and also for capital management once LLP is allowed to be a part of Tier-I capital requirement. Both changes in prudential regulation from pro-cyclic to a dynamic regime and convergence of accounting standard from rule-based to principle-based standards have significant negative fixed effects separately and jointly once included.

In this thesis, we study the behaviour and forecastability of exchange rates . Most of the existing literature on the forecasting of exchange rates concentrates on the end of the day price, commonly known as the 'close' price. Meese and Rogoff [30] show that this price tends to follow the naive random walk model, which implies that the best forecast for the next period is the current observed value. Instead, we study the dynamics and the predictability of the daily high and low prices using real-world data for the currency pairs GBP/USD, EUR/USD and AUD/USD. The daily high and low are the maximum and minimum prices reached for each 24-hour period by the currency pairs. We find strong evidence that the daily close prices lag these highs and lows. We use this knowledge to build an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) rolling regression model that produces one day ahead out-of-sample forecasts of these high and low prices. We also build an algorithm that uses already existing dynamic regression methods to correct for the autocorrelation often observed in time-series data. The window size used for the estimation of our model parameters is very important due to the nature of time series data. We propose an empirical method to find the best suitable window size for the estimation of these parameters. The out-of-sample predictability of our regression models is compared to a few benchmark models by using a number of different performance measures. We show that our models outperform these benchmark models in terms of their forecasting ability of high and low prices. Furthermore, a triggering method is developed for trading exchange rates using a saturation-reset linear feedback controller. First, we test our triggering method on an idealized market model, for which we propose a stochastic process. We then apply this triggering method to real-world data in order to study its performance. Finally, we construct trading strategies that combine these methods with our out-of-sample forecasts.

A presente dissertação tem como objetivo investigar, com base no materialismo histórico, as forças sociais que condicionam a realização do capitalismo enquanto um modo de produção mundial e que determinam, por conseguinte, as manifestações peculiares de sua ocorrência, neste caso, o sistema monetário internacional. Procura-se responder como o funcionamento da economia mundial capitalista e, por conseguinte, do sistema monetário internacional, pode ser compreendido a partir de uma interação orgânica entre Estado e capital, levando em consideração a complexidade imbuída na relação entre essas categorias. A hipótese aqui proposta é de que duas contradições ou leis gerais condicionam essa conexão no que diz respeito ao modo de produção capitalista e cumprem, dessa forma, um papel fundamental na explicação da dinâmica da economia mundial capitalista e do funcionamento do sistema monetário internacional. A primeira é a condição desigual e combinada do desenvolvimento social material, cuja manifestação completa só seria verificável na realização de uma economia mundial capitalista – quando o intercâmbio é generalizado, a produção material é integrada e especializada e o dinheiro assume papel de equivalente geral universal. A segunda, que aparece como decorrência da primeira, sugere que a essência e a dinâmica da economia mundial capitalista seriam condicionadas pela tensão entre a lógica universal do capital e a lógica dos capitalismos nacionais, as quais estão associadas, respectivamente, à essência da acumulação de capital e aos limites que as realidades políticas particulares impõem sobre esta. Por ser relacionada tanto à circulação de mercadorias no capitalismo quanto à macrounidade política representada pelo Estado, a categoria dinheiro discutida por Marx pode ser analisada a partir da tensão entre as lógicas apresentadas na medida em que se realiza enquanto dinheiro mundial e, nesse sentido, pode ser instrumentalizada para o entendimento da essência e das formas do sistema monetário internacional. Tem-se, como resultado desse processo analítico, uma proposta de reinterpretação do sistema monetário internacional, que procura não apenas demonstrar a interação orgânica entre Estado e capital, lógica universal do capital e lógica dos capitalismos nacionais, mas inclusive a relação entre desenvolvimento desigual e combinado e a ação do dinheiro enquanto equivalente geral universal. / The present dissertation aims to understand the social forces that condition the occurrence of capitalism as a global mode of production and therefore affect its particular manifestation represented by the international monetary system. The central question to be addressed is how the dynamics of the world capitalist economy and, as a consequence, of the international monetary system, can be understood by analyzing the organic interaction between National States and capital. We propose that two contradictions or general laws sharp the organic connection between States and capital and, because of that, play a fundamental role in explaining the dynamics of world capitalist economy and, as a consequence, of the international monetary system functioning. The first is the uneven and combined condition of social material development, which would only be completely verifiable when capitalism turns global - when the exchange is widespread, the material production is integrated and specialized, and the money assumes the role of the universal equivalent. The second, which appears as a result of the first, suggests that the essence and the dynamics of the world capitalist economy result from the tension between the universal logic of capital and the logic of national capitalisms. Both are associated, respectively, with the essence of the accumulation of capital and the limits imposed by particular political realities on it. Being a category, as Marx proposes it, money is related both to the circulation of commodities in capitalism and to the political macro-unity represented by the state. Therefore, we can associate it with the contradiction between the two presented logics; insofar it assumes the form of universal money. In this sense, money can be used to understand the essence and the forms of the international monetary system. As a result of this analytical process, we propose a reinterpretation of the international monetary system. It might be able not only to demonstrate the organic interaction between state and capital and between the universal logic of capital and the logic of national capitalisms, but also the connection of uneven and combined development and the action of money as universal equivalent.

ABSTRACT THE DOMINANCE OF THE DOLLAR AND ITS SUSTAINABILITY IN THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY SYSTEM K&ouml / se, Tekin M.S., Department of Economics Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Aylin Ege June 2008, 121 pages The aim of this thesis is to analyze and evaluate the dominance of the dollar and its sustainability in the international monetary system in the light of recent literature and relevant statistical data. Considering the determinants of an international currency, this thesis focuses on the linkages of the dominance of the dollar with the challenge of the euro as an alternative international currency, the current account deficit of the U.S. and foreign exchange reserve accumulation and reserve diversification decision of foreign central banks. The analysis on these determinants indicates that the U.S. dollar is facing many challenges and may face further challenges in sustaining its dominance as an international currency. Given the significance of the U.S. economy and dominance of the dollar as an international currency, the findings of this study indicate that although the euro has not much potential to surpass the dollar as an international currency in the short-term, it is more likely for the international monetary system to witness the existence of multiple international currencies and decline in the degree of the dominance of the dollar in the 21st century.