Journal of Advances in Economics and Finance

14

Authors: Barbara L. Neuby, Sandra M. Barrett

Amidst the continued economic woes in the EU, lagging growth in China, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the dollar and other major currencies, and various and sundry articles about banker fraud, derivative-induced collapses, and general economic malaise, there lies an undercurrent of debate about a potential common monetary destiny: a single global currency. This paper evaluates eight currency candidates across the three roles of money and creates a typology of 70 nations using aggregate freedom scores from Freedom House and data from Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to estimate banking system soundness. While some monetary units appear better suited for the monopoly role, none satisfies political criteria. Thirty-five nations scored well on total freedom and banking system stability and may serve as initial adopters if a currency candidate survives the political environment. Implementation concerns remain.

20

Authors: Frank Canovatchel

There are many studies that have analyzed the market for rice exports in terms of two or three major Asian rice-exporting countries. To date, there is no work that analyzes the behavior of the four major Asian rice exporters. Using export prices from the world’s leading Asian rice exporting countries: Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and India, this article examines market behavior and how the financial crisis of 2008 impacted the evolution of this market’s pricing behavior. Given that more than half of the world’s population depends on rice as part of its caloric intake and food security, efficient price formation is critical to maintaining price stability. The impact of U.S. rice export prices is not considered in this work because the United States is an entity outside of this market economically and geographically speaking. The financial crisis of 2008 had a major impact on grain prices and, more specifically, on rice supplies and prices. This work will examine the market pre-crisis and post-crisis to demonstrate that this market is evolving from coherent and defined export market to a more independent and less price oriented export market. This work examines real export prices of 5% broken rice from July 2002 to December 2015 from these four countries. The model employed uses FGLS regression using panel data.