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Contemporary international finance raises important questions about whether, and how, it might be overseen by national governments and international institutions. Inasmuch as global financial stability is a global public good, there is a normative case for governance structures to try to achieve this goal—whether they take the form of interstate cooperation or international institutions. This, however, does not mean that national states will necessarily be willing or able to work together to provide this global public good, as the incentives to free-ride are enormous. Nonetheless, the past 25 years do indicate that there has been some movement toward the provision of such global public goods as financial harmonization and a semblance of global lender-of-last-resort facilities. The record is spotty, but the trend appears to be in the direction of more global governance of global finance.

AbstractThis paper examines the heritage of international academic finance. Definitions of international empirical and theoretical research are proposed, and an economic characterization of a nation is offered. In addition, an extensive taxonomy of the finance discipline is suggested, and notable domestic and international research is referenced in each of its proposed subfields. The taxonomy illustrates the dramatic neglect of international research in academic finance, and suggests possible areas for future research. The taxonomy abo shows that even when international research in a particular subfield emerges, it is usually a simple extension of a domestic theory that has been in the subfield for many years. This apparent neglect may be explained by the lack of a good equilibrium model of international asset pricing, problems modelling partial market segmentation and culture, lack of good international treatments in finance textbooks, and previously unavailable international data. In sum, this review suggests that there exists first‐mover advantages in international finance research and teaching, and implies that Canadian finance academics should seize them while these advantages still exist.RésuméLe présent document examine les fruits de la recherche universitaire à l'éechelle internationale dans le domaine de la finance. Il propose des définitions de la recherche empirique et théorique internationale ainsi qu'une ca‐ractérisation économique d'un pays donné. De plus, il suggère une taxonomie complète de la discipline de la finance et, pour chacun des sous‐domaines proposés, il mentionne des travaux de recherche notables menés à l'échelle nationale et internationale. La taxonomie illustre les lacunes graves de la recherche internationale dans le domaine de la finance au niveau universitaire et suggère des secteurs qui pourraient faire I'objet de futures re‐cherches. La taxonomie montre également que, měme lorsque de la recherche internationale est menée dans un sous‐domaine particulier, il ne s'agit habituellement que du prolongement d'une théorie nationale observée dans le sous‐domaine en question depuis de nombreuses années. Ces lacunes apparentes pourraient s'expliquer par l'absence d'un bon modèle d'équilibre en matière de fixation des prix des actifs financiers, des problèmes sur le plan de la modélisation de la culture et de la segmentation partielle des marchés, l'absence d'un bon traitement international de la discipline dans les manuels de finance et l'impossibilité temporaire d'obtenir des données internal ionales. En somme, cet examen suggère que l'ensei‐gnement de la finance et la recherche en la matière à l'échelle internationale peuvent produire des avantages de premier plan et suppose que les universitaires canadiens spécialisés dans la finance devraient profiler de ces avantages pendant qu'its existent.

In Jam v. International Finance Corp., the U.S. Supreme Court held that the International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945 (IOIA) affords international organizations (IOs) the same immunity from suit in U.S. courts that foreign governments currently enjoy under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA), which codifies the restrictive theory of foreign sovereign immunity. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) had argued that the IOIA, which grants international organizations the "'same immunity' from suit … 'as is enjoyed by foreign governments'" (p. 15), should be understood to provide international organizations with absolute immunity, which it argued foreign governments enjoyed prior to the United States' explicit adoption of the restrictive theory in 1952. Under the restrictive theory, a foreign state is immune from suit for its sovereign acts (acta jure imperii), but not for its commercial acts (acta jure gestionis). By interpreting language in the IOIA as granting the "same immunity" to international organizations as foreign governments enjoy at the time the suit is filed, the Supreme Court aligned the regime for IO immunity with that of foreign state immunity, except in cases where the IO's founding charter provides a different rule or where the executive branch has explicitly limited immunity. It remains to be seen what IO activities are deemed "commercial" under this regime and what types of transactions are found to have a sufficient nexus to the United States to fall within the FSIA's commercial-activity exception.

196 International organizations — International administrative tribunals — World Bank Administrative Tribunal — Investigation — Misconduct — Abuse of position for financial gain — Acceptance of remuneration from outside parties in connection with Bank appointment — Failure to observe generally applicable norms of prudent professional conduct — Performance of service for outside entity — Retention and sharing of pornography — Application of amended staff rules — Proportionality of sanction — Due process — Administrative leave during investigation — Removal from office premises

636International organizations — Officials — Terms and conditions of employment — Termination of employment — Unsatisfactory performance — Agreement to extend Applicant's special leave on condition that all claims against the Respondent be settled — Whether precluding application to Tribunal — Whether agreement concluded under duressInternational tribunals — International administrative tribunals — World Bank Administrative Tribunal — Basis of jurisdiction — Right to apply to Tribunal derived from Statute of the Tribunal not from contract or terms of employment — Procedure — Review of decisions — Grounds for review

This thesis contributes to three major fields in the international finance literature: forward premium anomaly, monetary policy and exchange rate determination, and measuring monetary policy expectations from asset prices. In the first chapter, I develop a production-based asset pricing model predicting that excess returns of currency carry trade compensate investors for the commodity price risk. Commodity producers differ in their exposure to the export price risk. Exchange rate-commodity price covariance, procyclical interest rates, negative price of exchange rate volatility, and countercyclical currency risk premium arise endogenously. Empirically, risk factors implied by the model explain up to 55% of time-series variation in carry trade returns across developed countries, and generate substantial risk- and transaction costs-adjusted returns as tradable strategies. In the second chapter (jointly with Igor Pozdeev), we document a drift in exchange rates before monetary policy changes across major economies. Currencies tend to depreciate by 0.8% over ten days before policy rate cuts and appreciate by 0.5% before policy rate increases. We show that available fixed income instruments allow to forecast monetary policy decisions and thus that the drift is exploitable by investors. Buying (selling) currencies ten days in advance of predicted target rate hikes (cuts) earns on average a statistically significant excess return of over 40 basis points per ten-day period after trading costs. We further demonstrate that this return is robust to the choice of holding horizon and monetary policy forecast rule. Our results thus pose a major challenge for the risk-based explanations of the exchange rate dynamics. In the third chapter (jointly with Igor Pozdeev), we document overnight index swaps (OIS) to be unbiased predictors of future short rates in developed economies, bearing no significant risk premium for maturities up to one year. We show that the OIS underlying overnight rates accurately reflect the target rates set by central banks. We extract the implied future target rates from the OIS prices to predict the outcome of monetary policy meetings around the world. In the US, a randomly selected triplet of a target rate hike, cut and no-change is correctly classified using the OIS-implied rates in 99.9 and 98% of cases five and ten days before a FOMC announcement respectively. We report similarly high prediction accuracy for other developed countries.