Hyman Minsky stands as one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. His contributions to macroeconomic theory are primarily situated within the post-Keynesian tradition. This paper provides a concise overview of the fundamental elements of Minsky’s theoretical framework, focusing on his principal insights, the financial instability hypothesis, and its broader implications. Although Minsky developed his theory predominantly during the 1980s, it remained largely overlooked until the emergence of the global financial crisis in 2008. The present study seeks to evaluate the socioeconomic conditions and prevailing perceptions during the intervening period that contributed to the marginalisation and underappreciation of Minsky’s approach and policy recommendations. In so doing, the paper critically analyses several potential explanations for the relative neglect of his theoretical contributions.

By specifying the currency on which returns were to be repaid, respondentia was a ubiquitous financial instrument to carry international trade. Where multiple currencies existed and silver specie was the preferred money, imported silver performed as foreign currency. Thus, the import of foreign coins created issues for prices, profits, and exchange rates. Eighteenth-century Europeans alternatively used respondentia or bills depending on the monetary context, casting a shade of doubt on the inherent efficiency of a cashless means of payment. Until the 1820s, private bills of exchange did not circulate where cash had a premium. Europeans developed means to regulate the price of foreign coins and exchange rates. Elsewhere, respondentia allowed for hedging against exchange risk and propitiated arbitrage profits, giving an advantage over bills. The article documents the global scope of the instrument; it explains the exchange nature of the contract and explores the issues that the respondentia came to solve. It highlights the role of monies of account Europeans used in pricing foreign currencies in international trade.

This paper provides a method to assess the risk relief deriving from a foreign expansion by a life insurance company. We build a parsimonious continuous-time model for longevity risk that captures the dependence across different ages in domestic versus foreign populations. We calibrate the model to portray the case of a UK annuity portfolio expanding internationally toward Italian policyholders. The longevity risk diversification benefits of an international expansion are sizable, in particular when interest rates are low. The benefits are judged based on traditional measures, such as the Risk Margin or volatility reduction, and on a novel measure, the Diversification Index.