Following the Money: U.S. Finance in the World Economy

This volume explores significant shortcomings in U.S. data on international capital transactions and their implications for policymakers. The volume offers clearcut recommendations for U.S. agencies to bring data collection and analyses of the global economy into the twenty-first century.

The volume explores:

• How factors emerging since the early 1980s have shaped world financial markets and revealed shortcomings in data collection and analysis.
• How the existing U.S. data system works and where it fails how measurements of international financial transactions are recorded; and how swaps, options, and futures present special reporting problems.
• How alternative methods, such as collecting data, from sources such as global custodians and international clearinghouses, might improve coverage and accuracy.