The Research Handbook of Financial Markets carefully discusses the histories and current states of the most important financial markets and institutions, as well as explicitly underscoring open questions that need study. By describing the institutional structure of different markets and highlighting recent changes within them, it accurately highlights their evolving nature.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

The Institutional Theory of the Firm examines recent and previous organization theory literature to advocate what Evans (1995) refers to as the "embedded autonomy" of the firm, as well as its role in being simultaneously anchored in, for example, corporate legislation and regulatory practices on the national, regional (i.e., within the European Union) and transnational levels, while at the same time being granted the right to operate with significant degrees of freedom within this legal-regulatory model. Seen in this view, the embedded autonomy of the corporation represents a theoretical view of the corporation that complements the market-based image of the corporation in economic theory. When advocating the institutional theory model, three forms of embedded autonomy are examined. First, the corporation is enacted as a legal entity sui juris—as a freestanding "legal person" in corporate law and within the regulatory framework that serves to enforce legislation in everyday life settings. Second, the corporation is embedded within what social theorists refer to as moral economies, the norms and values that regulate what are the socially acceptable and legitimate means for conducting business. Third and finally, the corporation is embedded in governance, a relatively complex economic concept that denotes legal and regulatory control on the societal and economic system levels, and on the level of the individual corporation. By combining the three forms of embeddedness, sanctioned by law, norms, and governance, the embedded autonomy of the firm is secured on the basis of a variety of social practices and resources. This book brings together a diverse literature including management studies, economic sociology, legal theory, finance theory, and mainstream economic theory to advance the argument that the corporation is best understood as what is embedded in a social and economic context, yet best serving its defined and stipulated ends by assuming considerable degrees of freedom to operate in isolation from various stakeholders. It will be of relevance for a variety of readers, including graduate students, management scholars, policy-makers, and management consultants interested in organization theory and management studies.

Social science theorists from various scholarly disciplines have contributed to a recent literature that examines how the finance industry has expanded and now wields increasing influence across a variety of economic fields and industries. In some cases, this tendency towards a more sizeable and influential finance industry has been referred to as "the financialization" of the economy. This book explains how what is referred to as the finance-led economy (arguably a more neutral and less emotionally charged term than financialization) is premised on a number of conditions, institutional relations, and theoretical propositions and assumptions, and indicates what the real economic consequences are for market actors and households. The book provides a theoretically condensed but empirically grounded account of the contemporary finance-led economy, in many cases too complicated in its design and rich in detail to be understood equally by insiders—empirical research indicates—and lay audiences. It summarizes the relevant literature and points at two empirical cases, the construction industry and life science venturing, to better illustrate how the expansion of the finance industry has contributed to the capital formation process, and how the sovereign state has actively assisted this process. It offers a credible, yet accessible overview of the economic conditions that will arguably shape economic affairs for the foreseeable future. The book will find an audience amongst a variety of readers, including graduate students, management scholars, policymakers, and management consultants.

At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary and credit functions of the banking system, by requiring 100% reserve backing for deposits. Irving Fisher (1936) claimed the following advantages for this plan: (1) Much better control of a major source of business cycle fluctuations, sudden increases and contractions of bank credit and of the supply of bank-created money. (2) Complete elimination of bank runs. (3) Dramatic reduction of the (net) public debt. (4) Dramatic reduction of private debt, as money creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation. We study these claims by embedding a comprehensive and carefully calibrated model of the banking system in a DSGE model of the U.S. economy. We find support for all four of Fisher's claims. Furthermore, output gains approach 10 percent, and steady state inflation can drop to zero without posing problems for the conduct of monetary policy.

In this insightful book, Alexander Styhre examines how corporations, often understood primarily as economic entities or legal devices, seek to influence and shape the market and the wider society in which they operate. Given the scope of such activities in most advanced economies, Styhre argues that corporations are political agents in their own right and that they must be critically analyzed in these terms.

How the U.S. Federal Reserve began actively intervening in markets Walter Bagehot's Lombard Street, published in 1873 in the wake of a devastating London bank collapse, explained in clear and straightforward terms why central banks must serve as the lender of last resort to ensure liquidity in a faltering credit system. Bagehot's book set down the principles that helped define the role of modern central banks, particularly in times of crisis—but the recent global financial meltdown has posed unforeseen challenges. The New Lombard Street lays out the innovative principles needed to address the instability of today's markets and to rebuild our financial system. Revealing how we arrived at the current crisis, Perry Mehrling traces the evolution of ideas and institutions in the American banking system since the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. He explains how the Fed took classic central banking wisdom from Britain and Europe and adapted it to America's unique and considerably more volatile financial conditions. Mehrling demonstrates how the Fed increasingly found itself serving as the dealer of last resort to ensure the liquidity of securities markets—most dramatically amid the recent financial crisis. Now, as fallout from the crisis forces the Fed to adapt in unprecedented ways, new principles are needed to guide it. In The New Lombard Street, Mehrling persuasively argues for a return to the classic central bankers' "money view," which looks to the money market to assess risk and restore faith in our financial system.