When turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for 'a new Bretton Woods' to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of the ...remote New Hampshire town where representatives of forty-four nations gathered in July 1944, in the midst of the century's second great war, has become shorthand for enlightened globalization. The actual story surrounding the historic Bretton Woods accords, however, is full of startling drama, intrigue, and rivalry, which are vividly brought to life in Benn Steil's epic account.
Upending the conventional wisdom that Bretton Woods was the product of an amiable Anglo-American collaboration, Steil shows that it was in reality part of a much more ambitious geopolitical agenda hatched within President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Treasury and aimed at eliminating Britain as an economic and political rival. At the heart of the drama were the antipodal characters of John Maynard Keynes, the renowned and revolutionary British economist, and Harry Dexter White, the dogged, self-made American technocrat. Bringing to bear new and striking archival evidence, Steil offers the most compelling portrait yet of the complex and controversial figure of White--the architect of the dollar's privileged place in the Bretton Woods monetary system, who also, very privately, admired Soviet economic planning and engaged in clandestine communications with Soviet intelligence officials and agents over many years.
A remarkably deft work of storytelling that reveals how the blueprint for the postwar economic order was actually drawn,The Battle of Bretton Woodsis destined to become a classic of economic and political history.
Regulating Wall Street Acharya, Viral V; Cooley, Thomas F; Richardson, Matthew P ...
2010, 2010-10-28, c2011, Volume:
608
eBook
'Regulating Wall Street' assesses the strengths and weaknesses of new regulations in response to the recent global financial crisis. It summarises key issues that regulatory reform should address, ...evaluates the key components of regulatory reform and provides analysis of how the reforms will affect financial firms and markets.
This Element argues that governments allocate adjustment burdens strategically to protect their supporters, imposing adjustment costs upon the supporters of their opponents, who then protest in ...response. Using large-N micro-level survey data from three world regions and a global survey, it discusses the local political economy of International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending. It finds that opposition supporters in countries under IMF structural adjustment programs (SAP) are more likely to report that the IMF SAP increased economic hardships than government supporters and countries without IMF exposure. In addition, it finds that partisan gaps in IMF SAP evaluations widen in IMF program countries with an above-median number of conditions, suggesting that opposition supporters face heavier adjustment burdens, and that opposition supporters who think SAPs made their lives worse are more likely to protest. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This book presents an economic survey of international capital mobility from the late nineteenth century to the present. The authors examine the theory and empirical evidence surrounding the fall and ...rise of integration in the world market. A discussion of institutional developments focuses on capital controls and the pursuit of macroeconomic policy objectives in shifting monetary regimes. The Great Depression emerges as the key turning point in recent history of international capital markets, and offers important insights for contemporary policy debates. Its principal legacy is that the return to a world of global capital is marked by great unevenness in outcomes regarding both risks and rewards of capital market integration. More than in the past, foreign investment flows largely from rich countries to other rich countries. Yet most financial crises afflict developing countries, with costs for everyone.
The recent financial crisis proved that pre-existing arrangements for the governance of global markets were flawed. With reform underway in the USA, the EU and elsewhere, Emilios Avgouleas explores ...some of the questions associated with building an effective governance system and analyses the evolution of existing structures. By critiquing the soft law structures dominating international financial regulation and examining the roles of financial innovation and the neo-liberal policies in the expansion of global financial markets, he offers a new epistemological reading of the causes of the global financial crisis. Requisite reforms leave serious gaps in cross-border supervision, in the resolution of global financial institutions and in the monitoring of risk originating in the shadow banking sector. To close these gaps and safeguard the stability of the international financial system, an evolutionary governance system is proposed that will also enhance the welfare role of global financial markets.
Global Capital and National Governments, first published in 2003, suggests that international financial integration does not mean the end of social democratic welfare policies. Capital market ...openness allows participants to react swiftly and severely to government policy; but in the developed world, capital market participants consider only a few government policies when making decisions. Governments that conform to capital market pressures in macroeconomic areas remain relatively unconstrained in supply-side and micro-economic policy areas. Therefore, despite financial globalization, cross-national policy divergence among advanced democracies remains likely. Still, in the developing world, the influence of financial markets on government policy autonomy is more pronounced. The risk of default renders market participants willing to consider a range of government policies in investment decisions. This inference, however, must be tempered with awareness that governments retain choice. As evidence for its conclusions, Global Capital and National Governments draws on interviews with fund managers, quantitative analyses, and archival investment banking materials.
The global financial crisis of 2008 has given way to a proliferation of international agreements aimed at strengthening the prudential oversight and supervision of financial market participants. Yet ...how these rules operate is not well understood. Because international financial rules are expressed through informal, non-binding accords, scholars tend to view them as either weak treaty substitutes or by-products of national power. Rarely, if ever, are they cast as independent variables that can inform the behavior of regulators and market participants alike. This book explains how international financial law 'works' - and presents an alternative theory for understanding its purpose, operation and limitations. Drawing on a close institutional analysis of the post-crisis financial architecture, it argues that international financial law is often bolstered by a range of reputational, market and institutional mechanisms that make it more coercive than classical theories of international law predict.
A state's financial power is built on the effect its credit, property, and tax policies have on ordinary people: this is the key message of Leonard Seabrooke's comparative historical investigation, ...which turns the spotlight away from elite financial actors and toward institutions that matter for the majority of citizens. Seabrooke suggests that everyday contests between social groups and the state over how the economy should work determine the legitimacy of a state's financial and fiscal system. Ideally, he believes, such contests compel a state to intervene on behalf of people below the median income level, leading the state to broaden and deepen its domestic pool of capital while increasing its influence on international finance. But to do so, Seabrooke asserts, a state must first challenge powerful interests that benefit from the concentration of financial wealth. Seabrooke's novel constructivist approach is informed by economic sociology and the work of Max Weber. This book demonstrates how domestic legitimacy influences the character of international financial orders. It will interest all readers concerned with how best to transform state intervention in the economy for the good of the majority.
Corruption has been a feature of public institutions for centuries yet only relatively recently has it been made the subject of sustained scientific analysis. Lambsdorff shows how insights from ...institutional economics can be used to develop a better understanding of why corruption occurs and the best policies to combat it. He argues that rather than being deterred by penalties, corrupt actors are more influenced by other factors such as the opportunism of their criminal counterparts and the danger of acquiring an unreliable reputation. This suggests a novel strategy for fighting corruption similar to the invisible hand that governs competitive markets. This strategy - the 'invisible foot' - shows that the unreliability of corrupt counterparts induces honesty and good governance even in the absence of good intentions. Combining theoretical research with state-of-the-art empirical investigations, this book will be an invaluable resource for researchers and policy-makers concerned with anti-corruption reform.
Financial instability threatens the global economy. The volatility of capital movements across national borders has led many observers to argue for a reformed "global financial architecture," a body ...of consistent rules and institutions to prevent financial crises. Yet regulators have a decidedly mixed record in their attempts to create global standards for the financial system. David Andrew Singer seeks to explain the varying pressures on regulatory agencies to negotiate internationally acceptable rules and suggests that the variation is largely traceable to the different domestic political pressures faced by regulators.
InRegulating Capital, Singer provides both a theory of the effects of domestic pressures on international regulation and a detailed analysis of regulators' attempts at international rulemaking in banking, securities, and insurance. Singer addresses the complexities of global finance in an accessible style, and he does not turn away from the more dramatic aspects of globalization; he makes clear the international implications of bank failures and stock-market crashes, the rise of derivatives, and the catastrophic financial losses caused by Hurricane Katrina and the events of September 11.
