Junk bonds burst into the nation's headlines as the fastest growing and most controversial financial instruments of the 1980s. Branded with an unflattering nickname, these high yield securities were tarnished in the public eye by waves of negative publicity. Critics cast the financiers and entrepreneurs who pioneered their use as symbols of a decade of greed and financial excess. By the end of the 1980s, the heyday of junk bonds had seemingly come to a close with the conviction of junk bond pioneer Michael Milken and the bankruptcy of Drexel Burnham Lambert, the brokerage that dominated the...

Since financial myths exploded in the 1980s, the perspective of time creates a unique opportunity to update and expand the analysis begun in Glenn Yago's 1991 book, Junk Bonds: How High Yield Securities Restructured Corporate America (Oxford University Press). At the time of its publication, Junk Bonds drew controversial responses from the Federal Reserve and government agencies. In retrospect, the evidence clearly casts favorable light on the role of high yield securities. The research presented here demonstrates how financial innovations enabled capital access for...

The Development of Effective Securities Markets Gary Schinasi International Monetary Fund One of the more important lessons of the crisis of the 1990s DEGREESnot just the Asian Crisis is that the performance and structure of a country's financial system is an important fundamental factor for assessing that coimtry's overall economic performance and prospects, and as a destination for investment and asset returns. Market participants that are presently managing international portfolios now understand this very well. And as we all know, many countries are making strong efforts to reform their...

Automobiles dominate transportation today in most American cities. After World War II, urban planners embraced highway transportation as the solution to urban congestion, while mass transit was shunned as outmoded and appropriate only for older, densely populated cities. Yet the prolonged energy crisis, beginning in 1973, shattered most previously held attitudes about the role of mass transit, and it was now promoted as central to energy efficiency and rational land use. If mass transit is now possible and even desirable in new, auto-oriented cities - Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Tokyo - why did...

Robert L. Bartley Editor Emeritus, The Wall Street Journal As this collection of essays is published, markets, regulators and society generally are sorting through the wreckage of the collapse in tech stocks at the turn of the millennium. All the more reason for an exhaustive look at our last "bubble," if that is what we choose to call them. We haven't had time to digest the lesson of the tech stocks and the recession that started in March 2001. After a decade, though, we're ready to understand the savings and loan "bubble" that popped in 1989, preceding the recession that started in July...

Policy makers around the globe will find that Restructuring Regulation and Financial Institutions offers a cogent assessment of the contemporary regulatory environment in the U.S. financial markets, and a blueprint for action in evolving global financial markets.
Financial markets are among the most highly-regulated markets in the world. Nevertheless, financial crises still occur, witness the U.S. savings-and-loan fiasco of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the Mexican and East Asian Financial implosions of 1994 and 1997. What role does regulation play in...

China s emerging financial markets reflect the usual contrast between the country s measured approach toward policy, regulatory, and market reform, and the dynamic pace of rapid economic growth and development. But they also offer unusual challenges and opportunities. In the past five years, the pace of opening and reform has accelerated sharply. Recapitalization and partial privatization of the largest banks, and the allowance of some joint venture and branch operations for foreign financial institutions, are making rapid headway in developing and expanding financial services and improving...

An often-overlooked aspect of entrepreneurship in American is its role in emerging domestic markets (EDM). These markets low-to-moderate income communities, ethnic- and women-owned businesses, urban areas are frequently ignored by mainstream markets. Yet with current demographic trends, they are an increasingly large component of the US population. Entrepreneurship can serve as a means to foster business development in these emerging communities and as a critically important way to improve the standard of living in low- and moderate-income (LMI) sectors.

Increasingly, policy makers,...

China s emerging financial markets reflect the usual contrast between the country s measured approach toward policy, regulatory, and market reform, and the dynamic pace of rapid economic growth and development. But they also offer unusual challenges and opportunities. In the past five years, the pace of opening and reform has accelerated sharply. Recapitalization and partial privatization of the largest banks, and the allowance of some joint venture and branch operations for foreign financial institutions, are making rapid headway in developing and expanding financial services and improving...

Robert L. Bartley Editor Emeritus, The Wall Street Journal As this collection of essays is published, markets, regulators and society generally are sorting through the wreckage of the collapse in tech stocks at the turn of the millennium. All the more reason for an exhaustive look at our last "bubble," if that is what we choose to call them. We haven't had time to digest the lesson of the tech stocks and the recession that started in March 2001. After a decade, though, we're ready to understand the savings and loan "bubble" that popped in 1989, preceding the recession that started in July...