Jens Forssbaeck

In recent years, the term 'transparency' has emerged as one of the most popular and keenly-touted concepts around. In the economic-political debate, the principle of transparency is often advocated as a prerequisite for accountability, legitimacy, policy efficiency, and good governance, as well as a universal remedy against corruption, corporate and political scandals, financial crises, and a host of other problems. But transparency is more than a mere catch-phrase. Increased transparency is a bearing ideal behind regulatory reform in many areas, including financial reporting and banking regulation. Individual governments as well as multilateral bodies have launched broad-based initiatives to enhance transparency in both economic and other policy domains. Parallel to these developments, the concept of transparency has seeped its way into academic research in a wide range of social science disciplines, including the economic sciences. This increased importance of transparency in economics and business studies has called for a reference work that surveys existing research on transparency and explores its meaning and significance in different areas. The Oxford Handbook of Economic and Institutional Transparency is such a reference. Comprised of authoritative yet accessible contributions by leading scholars, this Handbook addresses questions such as: What is transparency? What is the rationale for transparency? What are the determinants and the effects of transparency? And is transparency always beneficial, or can it also be detrimental (if so, when)? The chapters are presented in three sections that correspond to three broad themes. The first section addresses transparency in different areas of economic policy. The second section covers institutional transparency and explores the role of transparency in market integration and regulation. Finally, the third section focuses on corporate transparency. Taken together, this volume offers an up-to-date account of existing work on and approaches to transparency in economic research, discusses open questions, and provides guidance for future research, all from a blend of disciplinary perspectives.

The dramatic evolution of financial markets in the 1980s and 1990s, accompanied by increasing institutional integration between nations (most notably in the EU), have fostered a widespread belief that governments - particularly those of small economies - have essentially lost the power to pursue sovereign, independent economic policies. At the same time, it is widely assumed that the loss of monetary-policy control is a major opportunity cost for a country adopting a rigid exchange-rate regime or, in the European context, for countries joining the EMU. This book sheds light on these arguments by examining the relationship between the international integration of domestic money markets and the degree of monetary-policy independence in eleven small, open economies in Europe. The authors address these important issues in the context of a broad-based historical analysis of market formation and growth, exchange-rate policies and deregulation. They find that political motives, in conjunction with competitive forces, path dependence and institutional factors, are a major determinant of market development. Moreover, they reveal that credible commitment to a stability goal is a far more reliable predictor of monetary-policy autonomy than the adoption of a specific exchange-rate regime. This accessible investigation of the relationship between domestic money-market development, international financial integration and the monetary-policy options available to small, open economies will be welcomed by students and researchers of macroeconomics, financial economics and political economy. The extensive empirical research and original conclusions will also be of interest and benefit to corporate decisionmakers, bankers, policymakers and regulators.