| The original contribution to knowledge here is the synthetic theory of hegemony in the context of international money. The dissertation focuses on the origins, functions and role of international money in the context of the global economy. The complex historical process that leads to the emergence of such money is traced in Economic Hegemony as a Factor in the Global Financial Architecture: evidence from XIX–XX cc. for the XXI century. The essay focuses on two currencies of world importance: the pound sterling and the US dollar, which during the respective periods of world dominance by Britain and the United States were, in different ways, the de facto world money and primary currencies of choice for use in global commerce and investment. The discussion spans from prehistory of international money to the future of the global economy and financial architecture as we explore and explain the connections between authority, technology, war, development, and money on a large scale across the parallels of the British and American eras of global hegemony or leadership. In Money in Time and in Space, the contextual macroeconomic power of authoritative influence finds its further definition. The system of authority on which money naturally depends, in the international context where there is only limited governance and regulation structure in existence at the time, manifests itself through influences of dominant economic systems that direct and condition all subordinate macroeconomic interactions. The theory and the logical engine behind the concepts of economic influence and hegemony are presented in the essay together with the implications of such things for economic policy spaces of small economies. The third essay, Interest Rates Convergence and Influence Signals, provides some empirical evidence on the degree of relative monetary policy independence of a twenty-years long large panel of countries with respect to their individual ability to set domestic interest rates independently from outside influences by major economies. In addition to the test of the hypothesis that domestic money market interest rates in non-major economies follow, or converge to, policy rates of the central economies—US, Germany, and Japan—and the evaluation of how quickly they do that, the essay offers a macroeconomic interpretation of the transmission mechanism and the role of foreign reserves (usually, assets denominated in the major economies' money) in the process of leading the interest rates to convergence through the erosion of relevant country risks during their financial integration with more stable zones. |
