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The recent world economic crisis showed very clearly that financial crises and sovereign defaults are severe threats to economic and social prosperity. In addition, it became apparent that currency crises and banking crises often occur together and are closely related to sovereign debt crises and defaults.

The present book contains new research on various important issues related to financial crises and sovereign default risk by leading experts in the field. The book discusses new modelling approaches to financial crises, defaults and their interdependencies. It also sheds light on the consequences of different sorts of crises for the trust in the institutions which are concerned with managing them. Moreover, it provides discussions of several institutional features of the EMU and the world financial system and in particular the risks inherent in these institutions. The book also includes interesting suggestions for solving crises and improving financial stability.

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Introduction.- Gold-backed Sovereign Bonds - An Effective Alternative to OMTs.- Trust in the European Central Bank Throughout the Worldwide Financial Crisis and the European Debt Crisis.- SIFIs in the Cross Sea - How Are Large German Banks Adjusting to a Rough Economic Environment and a New Regulatory Setting?.- The Endogenous Fragility at European Periphery.- The Danger of Tax Havens for Financial Stability.- The Evolution of International Geo-Political Risk 1956-2001.- Financial Crises and Sovereign Default: Dependencies, Timing and Uncertainty in a Stochastic Framework.- The Risk of Withdrawals from the EMU and the Foreign Exchange Market.- An Economic Approach to Market Risk.- The Quantity Theory of Money in Year Six After the Subprime Mortgage Crisis.

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Prof. Dr. Dominik Maltritz studied business and physics at the University of Goettingen, Germany. He earned his doctoral degree and his habilitation from Dresden University of Technology, Germany. Currently he is Professor for International economics at the University of Erfurt. His research interests include international economics, monetary economics and financial markets. Special research interests are international financial crises and sovereign defaults and especially their interdependencies. Furthermore he researches on international capital flows and capital costs and yield spreads applications of option pricing theory and asset pricing.

Prof. Dr. Michael Berlemann studied economic sciences at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. After completing his Ph.D. at Dresden University of Technology he joined the Dresden Branch of the ifo Institute of Economic Research. Since 2007 he holds a Chair for Political Economy and Empirical Economics at Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg. His primary fields of interest are Macroeconomics, Monetary Economics and Political Economy. He has published various articles in international refereed journals on financial crises such as Bulgarian Crisis or the recent Subprime Crisis. He also studies the effects of monetary policy on asset markets and early warning systems of price bubbles.

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