金融学外文翻译

毕业设计（论文）外文参考文献译文本

2011届

原文出处Financial Studies & Research

毕业设计(论文)题目：人民币内外价值背离原因分析

院（系）经济与管理学院

专业名称金融学

学生姓名

学生学号

指导教师

Comparative Financial Systems

Franklin Allen Wharton School

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, PA 19104

allenf@

Douglas Gale

Economics Department

New York University

New York, NY 10003

Douglas.Gale@

April 2001

1 What is a Financial System?

The purpose of a financial system is to cha nnel funds from agents with surpluses to agents with deficits. In the traditional literature there have been two approaches to analyzing this process. The first is to consider how agents interact through financial markets. The second looks at the operation offinancial intermediaries such as banks and insurance companies. Fifty years ago, the financial system could be neatly bifurcated in this way. Rich house-holds and large firms used the equity and bond markets,while less wealthy house-holds and medium and small firms used banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions. Table 1, for example, shows the ownership of corporate equities in 1950. Households owned over 90 percent. By 2000 it can be seen that the situation had changed dramatically.By then households held less than 40 percent, nonbank intermediaries, primarily pension funds and mutual funds, held over 40 percent. This change illustrates why it is no longer possible to consider the role of financial markets and financial institu tions separately. Rather than intermediating directly between households and firms, financial institutions have increasingly come to intermediate between households and markets, on the one hand, and between firms and markets,on the other. This makes it necessary to consider the financial system as anirreducible whole.

The notion that a financial system transfers resources between households and firms is, of course, a simplification. Go vernments usually play a significant role in the financial system. They are major borrowers, particularlyduri ng times of war, recession, or when large infrastructure projects are being undertaken. They sometimes also save significant amounts of funds. For example, when countries such as Norway and many Middle Eastern States have access to large amounts of natural resources (oil), the government may acquire large trust funds on behalf of the population.

In addition to their roles as borrowers or savers, governments usually playa number of other important roles. Central banks typically issue fiat money and are extensively involved in the payments system. Financial systems with unregulated markets and intermediaries, such as the US in the late nineteenth century, often experience financial crises.The desire to eliminate these crises led many governments to intervene in a significant way in the financial system. Central banks or