Recent changes in technology, along with the opening up of many regions previously closed to investment, have led to explosive growth in the international movement of capital. Flows from foreign direct investment and debt and equity financing can bring countries substantial gains by augmenting local savings and by improving technology and incentives. Investing companies acquire market access, lower cost inputs, and opportunities for profitable introductions of production methods in the countries where they invest. But, as was underscored recently by the economic and financial crises in several Asian countries, capital flows can also bring risks. Although there is no simple explanation of the currency crisis in Asia, it is clear that fixed exchange rates and chronic deficits increased the likelihood of a breakdown. Similarly, during the 1970s, the United States and other industrial countries loaned OPEC surpluses to borrowers in Latin America. But when the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates to control soaring inflation, the result was a widespread debt moratorium in Latin America as many countries throughout the region struggled to pay the high interest on their foreign loans. International Capital Flows contains recent work by eminent scholars and practitioners on the experience of capital flows to Latin America, Asia, and eastern Europe. These papers discuss the role of banks, equity markets, and foreign direct investment in international capital flows, and the risks that investors and others face with these transactions. By focusing on capital flows' productivity and determinants, and the policy issues they raise, this collection is a valuable resource for economists, policymakers, and financial market participants.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

This timely volume addresses three important recent trends in the internationalization of United States equity markets: extensive market integration through foreign investment and links among stock prices around the world; increasing securitization as countries such as Japan come to rely more than ever before on markets in equities and bonds at the expense of banks; and the opening of national financial systems of newly industrializing countries to international financial flows and institutions, as governments remove capital controls and other barriers. Eight essays examine such issues as the current extent of international market integration, gains to U.S. investors through international diversification, home-country bias in investing, the role of time and location around the world in stock trading, and the behavior of country funds. Other, long-standing questions about equity markets are also addressed, including market efficiency and the accuracy of models of expected returns, with a particular focus on variances, covariances, and the price of risk according to the Capital Asset Pricing Model.

The first edition of The Economist Guide to Investment Strategy explained the fundamentals of investment risk, how to put together "keep-it-simple" investment strategies, and the need to guard against our own behavior leading to dreadful investment mistakes. The global crisis that erupted in 2008 exposed the flaws in many more complicated investment strategies. The second edition starts with a new section on financial fraud and how investors can help to protect themselves against this "hearty perennial." It also includes a new section on risk profiling and discusses the role of risk tolerance questionnaires. In Chapter 3 data are provided pointing to underperformance of equities between 1978 and 2008. Against this background, there is a new Chapter 4—"Which should we do: buy-and-hold or time markets?" Chapter 5, which discusses the design of short-term and long-term strategies, includes a new section—"How safe is cash?"—and the discussion of bond ladders is extended to reflect issues of bond selection in the light of corporate credit risk and the financial difficulties of some US municipal authorities. Part 2 has been updated extensively to reflect developments in the past four years and the impact of the financial crisis on credit instruments, hedge funds, private equity, and real estate. The book concludes with a new chapter on investing in art and collectibles. It explores the argument that art prices "float aimlessly," discusses financial investment in art, and provides some reasons for expecting that a portfolio of art might perform well in the future.

We investigate how corporate stock returns respond to geopolitical risk in the case of South Korea, which has experienced large and unpredictable geopolitical swings that originate from North Korea. To do so, a monthly index of geopolitical risk from North Korea (the GPRNK index) is constructed using automated keyword searches in South Korean media. The GPRNK index, designed to capture both upside and downside risk, corroborates that geopolitical risk sharply increases with the occurrence of nuclear tests, missile launches, or military confrontations, and decreases significantly around the times of summit meetings or multilateral talks. Using firm-level data, we find that heightened geopolitical risk reduces stock returns, and that the reductions in stock returns are greater especially for large firms, firms with a higher share of domestic investors, and for firms with a higher ratio of fixed assets to total assets. These results suggest that international portfolio diversification and investment irreversibility are important channels through which geopolitical risk affects stock returns.

Supported by numerous charts and detailed analysis, The Economist Guide to Investment Strategy outlines how to construct investment strategies appropriate for individual investors. It looks at the risks and opportunities of uncomplicated strategies and it comes with wealth-warnings for those who wish to explore more sophisticated and fashionable investment approaches. It emphasizes the importance of taking into account insights from behavioral analysis as well as the principles of traditional finance. It highlights how habitual patterns of decision-making can lead any of us into costly mistakes, and it stresses how markets are most dangerous when they appear to be most rewarding.