Numerous archival documents show how the suspension of payments by Philip II, in September 1575, on the contracts with Genoese bankers (asientos) induced a freeze of the domestic credit market in Castile through the bankers’ intermediation for asientos and the credit interconnections. Commercial fairs stopped, banks failed and trade suffered while the king granted legal protection to the Genoese bankers. The evidence strikingly confirms that by his strategy, Philip II was able to remove the de facto ceiling on the domestic debt (juros) imposed by the fixed revenue commitment of the Castilian cities in the Cortes. The agreement with the bankers was signed in December 1577 immediately after the cities had agreed to the doubling of their commitment.

This article examines Britain's temporary import surcharge introduced in October 1964, a largely overlooked but significant dimension of the 1964 sterling crisis. Import surcharges (temporary supplementary tariff) were illegal under GATT rules and aroused fury among trading partners. Britain's surcharge is placed in context by consideration of the use of import surcharges by other countries under Bretton Woods as currency crisis management and balance of payments measures, notably Canada's import surcharge of 1962–3 that inspired Britain's. Developed by the Conservative administration from 1963, a 15 per cent surcharge was introduced by the newly elected Wilson government as a radical alternative to deflation or devaluation to help correct the record balance of payments deficit and meet the gathering sterling crisis. As a currency crisis management measure the surcharge worked in Canada but in Britain it made matters worse and was soon supplanted by conventional measures. Deemed a failure and discredited, the surcharge was eventually lifted in November 1966 ‘unwept, unhonoured and unsung’ (Financial Times). Nevertheless, while in place the surcharge provided significant temporary assistance to the improvement of Britain's balance of payments.

This article provides a historical overview of the factors leading up to debt crises and the default mechanisms used by governments to solve them, ranging from repudiation and restructuring to inflation tax and financial repression. The paper also analyses the Spanish governments’ graduation to responsible public debt management under democracy and the last debt crisis starting in 2010. After analysing the evolution of the outstanding public debt, budget deficits, the Spanish economy's ability to borrow, the central government's debt affordability and the profile of public debt, the article concludes that the Spanish case confirms the main hypotheses of concerning international debt crises: short-term borrowing enhanced the risk of a debt crisis; insolvency problems arose when governments were unwilling or unable to repay debt; debt crises took place after large capital inflows; most outright defaults ended up being partial defaults; public debt level became unsustainable when it rose above 60-90 per cent of GDP; default trough inflation became commonplace when fiat money displaced coinage; financial repression was used as a subtle type of debt restructuring; and defaults endangered the creditworthiness of the Spanish Finance Ministry and forced disciplined fiscal policies.

Although previous work shows strong relationships between oil prices and economic activity, the empirical evidence on the impact of oil prices on stock market returns has been mixed. This article investigates the existence of long-term relationships between oil prices and stock market indices in Europe using both aggregate and sector indices and linear and asymmetric cointegration. Our findings show that the response of stock prices to oil price depends greatly on the sector of activity and that oil prices affect stock returns in an asymmetric fashion.

This paper studies banking liquidity crises under the assumption that the government may have private benefits in bailing-out a collapsing banking sector for reputation concerns. This political distortion feeds political uncertainty, as citizens may not agree with a bailout decision and overthrow the government. This paper shows that higher political uncertainty increases both financial and political instabilities as it enlarges the set of parameters for which bank runs and the dismissal of the government are optimal. Higher political uncertainty may stem from the occurrence of a politico-financial crisis in another similar country. Contagion takes place if citizens update their beliefs on the type of their government. Doing so, they may reinforce their beliefs that the government is self-interested and bank bailouts are not socially optimal.

Cette étude revient sur la distinction établie entre deux règles de fixation irrévocable des cours de change: une règle temporelle suivant laquelle le gel de la parité est programmé à une date arbitraire; une règle d'état sous laquelle cette décision résulte de l'atteinte d'un seuil par les déterminants fondamentaux. En les replaçant dans un cadre d'analyse commun, ces stratégies apparaisent en fait rigoureusement équivalentes en l'absence d'incertitude sur le déroulement de la transition. Une correspondance en termes probabilistes est établie dans un contexte stochastique plus général. Ce cadre d'analyse unifié s'avère un préalable utile pour entreprendre une relecture de la stratégie maastrichtienne en matière cambiaire et mettre à jour certaines propriétés du scénario finalement adopté par les autorités européennes.

On admet généralement que la mobilité internationale serait devenue très forte à la suite de la libéralisation et de l'intégration financière des vingt dernières années. De façon surprenante, la plupart des travaux empiriques « à la Feldstein-Horioka » ne valident cette hypothèse. Une reconsidération de ces estimations conduit toutefois à des résultats neufs. Les tests, même classiques, confortent l'idée d'un accroissement à long terme de la mobilitéet la tendance s'est accentuée depuis le début des années quatre-vingt. Tous les pays industrialisés, grands ou petits, sont concernés par cette augmentation; la globalisation financière marque néanmoins une frontière entre ces pays et les pays émergents pour lesquels l'investissement demeure dépendant de l'épargne intérieure. Dans l'ensemble, la décorrélation entre investissement et épargne se manifeste par une plus grande autonomie des flux de capitaux. La relation linéaire entre investissement et épargne pivote autour d'un point fixe représenté par le taux d'épargne mondial. Le positionnement des pays par rapport à ce point fixe permet d'établir une typologie robuste qui remet en cause l'idée reçue selon laquelle tous les pays seraient égaux devant la globalisation financière.