Acknowledgments

I want to thank Stefan Giesen and Steven Hardman at De Gruyter for taking the initiative on the “original handshake,” and particularly to Steven for gracefully stewarding me through the early days. I am deeply indebted to my content editor Jaya Dalal, also at De Gruyter, who was a constant source of masterful and responsive editorial support. Her many great ideas helped shape the project in a meaningful way.

I could not be more thankful for Taowen Hu and Mindy Valcarcel for their painstaking and thorough editing of the final manuscript. Their attention to detail played a crucial role and their constant support was paramount to my finishing, relatively on time… ahem.

I am indebted to Enrique Martinez-Garcia for his great support and ideas in the early days.

I want to thank Maria Teresa Morla, Ivan and Secundino, Mark Wohar, John Keating, Lee Smith, Kevin Siqueira, Dann Arce and Jennifer Holmes, for their encouragement and valuable input at all stages of the project.

I am grateful to William Barnett, Yuanchen Bing, Robin Chen, Fernando Colunga, Yundi Lu, and Yuan Ma and to my family (mama, Esther, Esther y Julio, Carmen y Luis, Suso, Pedro, Merche, papa, y todos los demas) for their patience and understanding when this work sometimes kept me away from being as responsive as I would have liked.

I am grateful to Shu Wu for teaching me that kindness does belong in the study of financial economics. Rest easy my friend.

This book is the culmination of a multiyear project collecting my own class notes for my M.S. course in International Banking and Monetary Systems at the University of Texas at Dallas. I am thankful for all the student feedback I have received on the course over the years, particularly those in the inaugural class: Dareem Antoine, Taylor Fisher, Nada Iqbal, Prattasha Islam, Colin Mckenzie, Ashutosh Patel, Artimes Rashidi Torghi, and Mumuksha Singla.

And, once again, a final word of thanks to Tom Clark, Stefan Giesen, Albrecht Doehnert, Gerhard Boomgaarden, Steven Hardman, Jaya Dalal, Natalie Wachsmann, Vilma Vaičeliūnienė, and other folks at De Gruyter who helped make this project a labor of love.