Hans-Joachim Voth Book order

"Why do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign borrowers who promptly go bankrupt? When can this type of lending work? As the United States and many European nations struggle with mountains of debt, historical precedents can offer valuable insights. Lending to the Borrower from Hell looks at one famous case--the debts and defaults of Philip II of Spain. Ruling over one of the largest and most powerful empires in history, King Philip defaulted four times. Yet he never lost access to capital markets and could borrow again within a year or two of each default. Exploring the shrewd reasoning of the lenders who continued to offer money, Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth analyze the lessons from this important historical example. Using detailed new evidence collected from sixteenth-century archives, Drelichman and Voth examine the incentives and returns of lenders. They provide powerful evidence that in the right situations, lenders not only survive despite defaults--they thrive. Drelichman and Voth also demonstrate that debt markets cope well, despite massive fluctuations in expenditure and revenue, when lending functions like insurance. The authors unearth unique sixteenth-century loan contracts that offered highly effective risk sharing between the king and his lenders, with payment obligations reduced in bad times. A fascinating story of finance and empire, Lending to the Borrower from Hell offers an intelligent model for keeping economies safe in times of sovereign debt crises and defaults"-- Provided by publisher

This book reconstructs patterns of time-use in England after 1750. It exploits previously unused court records to reconstruct the working lives of Englishmen and -women at the dawn of the Industrial Age. Working hours became much longer. Within 80 years, the length of the working year increased by approximately 20 percent.

Will the finance markets experience a crash when some of the big hedge funds go bust? And will we soon be seeing large numbers of German businesses taken over by private investors who then dismiss droves of employees and relocate production abroad so that expectations of enormously high yields can be fulfilled? It is these questions that the report investigates. It describes the background and incentives that have led to a vast inflow of money into private equity and hedge funds, explains just how good their performance as an investment vehicle really is, and analyses the opportunities and risks for the stability of the finance system and the growth implications for the German economy. The focus is on regulatory proposals and in this context the report advocates a departure from 'soapbox speeches'. There are an enormous number of practical hurdles standing in the way of tighter regulation and they may not be naively ignored. A direct regulation of funds with domiciles on offshore islands is not enforceable. But even without support from the Anglo Saxon partners, European policy makers can do much to implement more meaningful regulations. An important starting point is the regulation of the banks: the granting of loans must be handled more wisely and with more restraint. The report makes a number of practical proposals, suggesting ways how the many increasingly threatening dangers can be eliminated.