In this paper, we investigate the welfare implications of alternative financial market structures in a two-country endowment economy model. In particular, we obtain an analytic expression for the expected lifetime utility of the representative household when sovereign bonds are the only internationally traded asset, and we compare this welfare level with that obtained under complete asset markets. The welfare cost of incomplete markets is negligible if agents are very patient and shocks are not very persistent, but this cost is dramatically larger if agents are relatively impatient and shocks are highly persistent. For realistic cases in which agents are very patient and shocks are highly persistent (that is, the discount factor and the first-order autocorrelation are both near unity), the welfare cost of incomplete markets is highly sensitive to the specific values of these parameters. Finally, using a non-linear solution algorithm, we confirm that a two-country production economy with endogenous labor supply has qualitatively similar welfare properties.

The remarkable growth of financial markets over the past decades has been accompanied by an equally remarkable explosion in financial engineering, the interdisciplinary field focusing on applications of mathematical and statistical modeling and computational technology to problems in the financial services industry. The goals of financial engineering research are to develop empirically realistic stochastic models describing dynamics of financial risk variables, such as asset prices, foreign exchange rates, and interest rates, and to develop analytical, computational and statistical methods and tools to implement the models and employ them to design and evaluate financial products and processes to manage risk and to meet financial goals. This handbook describes the latest developments in this rapidly evolving field in the areas of modeling and pricing financial derivatives, building models of interest rates and credit risk, pricing and hedging in incomplete markets, risk management, and portfolio optimization. Leading researchers in each of these areas provide their perspective on the state of the art in terms of analysis, computation, and practical relevance. The authors describe essential results to date, fundamental methods and tools, as well as new views of the existing literature, opportunities, and challenges for future research.

Vol. 54, No. 2 includes three notable contributions from the Seventh Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference (ARC) hosted by the IMF in November 2006. Its lead paper, by Olivier Blanchard of Harvard University, is the 2006 Mundell-Fleming Lecture (delivered at the ARC), which analyzes current-account deficits in the advanced economies. Other papers in this issue look at the relationship between international financial integration and the real economy. Other papers discuss whether (or not): i) the next capital account crisis can be predicted; ii) accepted definitions of debt crises are adequate; iii) the Doha Round of trade talks (if they are ever successfully completed) will lead to preference erosion; and finally iv) there is room for political opportunism in countries deciding between money-based or exchange-rate-based stabilization programs.

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A thorough investigation of financial market integration in Europe.