Real world investors differ in their tastes and attitudes and they do not have, in general, perfect information about the future prospects of the economy. Most theoretical models, however, assume to the contrary that investors are homogeneous and perfectly informed about the market. In this book, an attempt is made to overcome these shortcomings. In three different case studies, the effect of heterogeneous time preferences, heterogeneous beliefs and imperfect information about the economy's growth on the term structure of interest rates are studied. The initial chapter gives an introduction to the theory of financial markets in continuous time under imperfect information and establishes the existence of an equilibrium with complete markets.

Financial Markets play an important role in economic development, channeling saving to investments and facilitating growth. In Eastern Europe financial markets were initially much underdeveloped, and lacked the skills and infrastructure they needed to be efficient, having not acquired them in the pre-transition era. The book offers a both theoretical and empirical analysis of financial markets in transitional economies. It investigates financial markets in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, and their role in the developments in the 1990s.

The essays included in this book are the result ofseven years ofresearch spanning the 1990-1997 period. Most of them have been published in scientific magazines or as chapters of books. To the end of this edition, and in order to avoid repetitions, the original texts have been modified, particularly with regard to the titles and introductions ofthe chapters. Chapter two reproduces the article "Economic Integration and Intra-Industry Trade: The Case of the Argentine-Brazilian Free Trade Agreement", published in the Journal of Common Markets (vol XXIX, No 5, pp. 527-552, sept. 1991). Chapter three originates from an empirical study prepared for UNIDO, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. The analytical framework and the preliminary conclusions of that work appeared in a working paper "The MERCOSUR Pattern of Intra-Industry Trade" (RP No 75, Stockholm: LAIS, 1997). Chapter four was published with the title "Plant-size Effects ofTrade: The Case of MERCOSUR Countries" as a chapter of the book Growth Trade and Integration in Latin America (W. Karlsson and A. Malaki (eds. ), Stockholm: LAIS, pp. 297-319, 1996). Chapter five in tum corresponds to the article entitled "Measuring the Effects of Economic Integration for the Southern Cone Countries: Industry Simulations of Trade Liberalization" as published in The Developing Economies (Vol. XXXIII, No 1, pp. 1-31, mars 1995). Finally, chapter six is the revised and updated version of the paper presented at the First European Congress ofLatinamericanists, which took place at Salamanca, Spain in June 1996.

The present volume contains the proceedings of an international conference on the economic history of the seaports of Antwerp and Rotterdam (1870-2000). This venue was held at Antwerp on 10-11 May 2001 and was hosted by the Antwerp Port Authority. This international conference aimed at confronting the development of both ports. In the course of the last century and a half, economic growth in the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam has been staggering. Maritime economic historians, economists and geographers alike have investigated the development of both ports extensively, but separately. So far, only a limited number of attempts have been made to analyse Rotterdam-Antwerp port history from a comparative perspective. The papers presented at the conference provide a challenging starting point to - certain how and why both ports reacted differently to virtually the same economic and political stimuli. By bringing together both historians, economists and lawyers with different fields of interest, we have attempted to put the history of the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam in a broader international and comparative perspective.

Since the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) have been involved in the transition process. This book compares the progress of some of these economies in transition and analyses their growth potential. The focus lies on the special role that foreign trade liberalisation and foreign direct investment plays in economic growth. Since foreign trade and foreign direct investment are important channels of technology transfer they can substantially contribute to a higher level of economic growth. Based on the gravity model this book investigates potential in foreign trade and foreign direct investment for selected CIS and CEECs with developed OECD economies. Policy options for some of these countries are discussed including issues of foreign trade, foreign direct investment, structural adjustment, and economic growth.

The introduction of a single European currency constitutes a remarkable instance of internationalization of monetary policy. Whether a concomitant internationalization can be detected also in the econometric foundations of monetary policy is the topic dealt with in this book. The basic theoretical ingredients comprise a data-driven approach to econometric modelling and a generalized approach to cross-sectional aggregation. The empirical result is a data-consistent structural money demand function isolated within a properly identified, dynamic macroeconomic system for Europe. The book itself evolved from a research project within the former Son derforschungsbereich SFB 178 "Internationalization of the Economy" at the University of Konstanz. Its finalization entails a due amount of gratitude to be extended into several directions: I am personally indebted, first of all, to my academic supervisor, Professor Dr. Nikolaus Laufer, for originally inspiring this work and for meticulously perusing its eventual result. Professor Dr. Win fried Pohlmeier, as a second supervisor, provided valuable confidence bounds around an earlier draft. The comments of both supervisors contributed substantially to the present shape of the book. I am institutionally indebted to the University of Konstanz, notably its Faculty of Economics and Statistics, for continuous provision of an excellent research environment, and to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in Bonn for generous sponsorship of the former SFB, whose financial support dur ing that period is gratefully acknowledged. I am also indebted to Dresdner Bank AG Frankfurt, Risk Methodology Trading, for benign tolerance of all distractions associated with the preparation of the final manuscript.