Globalization is triggering a 'revenue shock' in developing economies. International trade taxes - once the primary source of government revenue - have been cut drastically in response to trade liberalization. Bastiaens and Rudra make the novel argument that regime type is a major determinant of revenue-raising capacity once free trade policies have been adopted. Specifically, policymakers in democracies confront greater challenges than their authoritarian counterparts when implementing tax reforms to offset liberalization's revenue shocks. The repercussions are significant: while the poor bear the brunt of this revenue shortfall in democracies, authoritarian regimes are better-off overall. Paradoxically, then, citizens of democracies suffer precisely because their freer political culture constrains governmental ability to tax and redistribute under globalization. This important contribution on the battle between open societies and the ability of governments to help their people prosper under globalization is essential reading for students and scholars of political economy, development studies and comparative politics.
"Capital markets have undergone a dramatic transformation in the past two decades. Algorithmic high-speed supercomputing has replaced traditional floor trading and human market makers, while centralized exchanges that once ensured fairness and transparency have fragmented into a dizzying array of competing exchanges and trading platforms. Darkness by Design exposes the unseen perils of market fragmentation and 'dark' markets, some of which are deliberately designed to enable the transfer of wealth from the weak to the powerful. Walter Mattli traces the fall of the traditional exchange model of the NYSE, the world's leading stock market in the twentieth century, showing how it has come to be supplanted by fragmented markets whose governance is frequently set up to allow unscrupulous operators to exploit conflicts of interest at the expense of an unsuspecting public. Market makers have few obligations, market surveillance is neglected or impossible, enforcement is ineffective, and new technologies are not necessarily used to improve oversight but to offer lucrative preferential market access to select clients in ways that are often hidden. Mattli argues that power politics is central in today's fragmented markets. He sheds critical light on how the redistribution of power and influence has created new winners and losers in capital markets and lays the groundwork for sensible reforms to combat shady trading schemes and reclaim these markets for the long-term benefit of everyone. Essential reading for anyone with money in the stock market, Darkness by Design challenges the conventional view of markets and reveals the troubling implications of unchecked market power for the health of the global economy and society as a whole"--
Despite the role of shadow banking in the building up of the 2008 international financial crisis, the massive size of this sector, its cross-border nature, and the risks it entails for financial stability, the post-crisis regulation of shadow banking has remained rather feeble. Why?The Perils of International Regime Complexity in Shadow Banking identifies a 'game of shadows', which unfolded recursively concerning the definition, monitoring, and regulation of shadow banking internationally. Thus, states, regulators, and private actors tended to cast light away from variousparts of the shadow banking system - shadow banking was (re)fined over time, its measurement was narrowed down, lessening the (perceived) need for regulation.The playing out of such a game was facilitated by the international architecture for shadow banking governance, which is a 'regime complex' characterized by the presence of multiple institutions and elemental regimes governing a set of related issues. Indeed, shadow banking is a quintessential casefor demonstrating the perils of international regime complexity, which magnifies problems that are endemic in governing global finance - namely, interstate competition, disagreement between technocratic bodies, and the power of the financial industry - while splintering solutions, due to thefragmentation of regulatory authority.Empirically, this book examines various elemental regimes concerning different aspects of shadow banking, namely: international standards for defining, measuring, and monitoring global shadow banking; international standards for shadow banking entities, including money market funds, hedge funds, andinvestment funds; international standards for shadow banking activities, such as securitization, securities lending, and repos; international standards for bank capital exposures to shadow banking.
Despite the role of shadow banking in the building up of the 2008 international financial crisis, the massive size of this sector, its cross-border nature, and the risks it entails for financial stability, the post-crisis regulation of shadow banking has remained rather feeble. Why? The Perils of International Regime Complexity in Shadow Banking identifies a 'game of shadows', which unfolded recursively concerning the definition, monitoring, and regulation of shadow banking internationally. Thus, states, regulators, and private actors tended to cast light away from various parts of the shadow banking system - shadow banking was (re)fined over time, its measurement was narrowed down, lessening the (perceived) need for regulation. The playing out of such a game was facilitated by the international architecture for shadow banking governance, which is a 'regime complex' characterized by the presence of multiple institutions and elemental regimes governing a set of related issues. Indeed, shadow banking is a quintessential case for demonstrating the perils of international regime complexity, which magnifies problems that are endemic in governing global finance - namely, interstate competition, disagreement between technocratic bodies, and the power of the financial industry - while splintering solutions, due to the fragmentation of regulatory authority. Empirically, this book examines various elemental regimes concerning different aspects of shadow banking, namely: international standards for defining, measuring, and monitoring global shadow banking; international standards for shadow banking entities, including money market funds, hedge funds, and investment funds; international standards for shadow banking activities, such as securitization, securities lending, and repos; international standards for bank capital exposures to shadow banking.
Before the advent of synthetic fibers and cargo containers, jute sacks were the preferred packaging material of global trade, transporting the world's grain, cotton, sugar, tobacco, coffee, wool, guano, and bacon. Jute was the second-most widely consumed fiber in the world, after cotton. While the sack circulated globally, the plant was cultivated almost exclusively by peasant smallholders in a small corner of the world: the Bengal delta. This book examines how jute fibers entangled the delta's peasantry in the rhythms and vicissitudes of global capital. Taking readers from the nineteenth-century high noon of the British Raj to the early years of post-partition Pakistan in the mid-twentieth century, Tariq Omar Ali traces how the global connections wrought by jute transformed every facet of peasant life: practices of work, leisure, domesticity, and sociality; ideas and discourses of justice, ethics, piety, and religiosity; and political commitments and actions. Ali examines how peasant life was structured and restructured with oscillations in global commodity markets, as the nineteenth-century period of peasant consumerism and prosperity gave way to debt and poverty in the twentieth century. A Local History of Global Capital traces how jute bound the Bengal delta's peasantry to turbulent global capital, and how global commodity markets shaped everyday peasant life and determined the difference between prosperity and poverty, survival and starvation.
This book was prompted by the current, lingering financial crisis, which has its basis in the disorderly financial practices of the United States. These practices have resulted in an accumulated debt which now requires the United States to run financial policies at artificially low interest rates. In principle, these low interest rates should flood the markets with ready money. Since the spread for banks is very thin, however, and they must carefully discriminate between available risks and finance only those propositions with no risk, credit is not abundantly available. With staggering foreign debt and a myriad of other perils looming, this great nation is at peril for sure. In the tradition of the Heilbronn Symposium, the authors look at historical cases as a means of understanding the current situation and informing possible solutions to a problem that continues to affect the global economy. The volume analyzes cases such as Prussia, Greece, Italy, Estonia, and the European Union. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of economic history as well as policy makers who may benefit from an historical understanding of the economic challenges their countries currently face.
Recent changes in technology, along with the opening up of many regions previously closed to investment, have led to explosive growth in the international movement of capital. Flows from foreign direct investment and debt and equity financing can bring countries substantial gains by augmenting local savings and by improving technology and incentives. Investing companies acquire market access, lower cost inputs, and opportunities for profitable introductions of production methods in the countries where they invest. But, as was underscored recently by the economic and financial crises in several Asian countries, capital flows can also bring risks. Although there is no simple explanation of the currency crisis in Asia, it is clear that fixed exchange rates and chronic deficits increased the likelihood of a breakdown. Similarly, during the 1970s, the United States and other industrial countries loaned OPEC surpluses to borrowers in Latin America. But when the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates to control soaring inflation, the result was a widespread debt moratorium in Latin America as many countries throughout the region struggled to pay the high interest on their foreign loans. International Capital Flows contains recent work by eminent scholars and practitioners on the experience of capital flows to Latin America, Asia, and eastern Europe. These papers discuss the role of banks, equity markets, and foreign direct investment in international capital flows, and the risks that investors and others face with these transactions. By focusing on capital flows' productivity and determinants, and the policy issues they raise, this collection is a valuable resource for economists, policymakers, and financial market participants.
This book analyzes the dangers of financial nationalism in an interconnected global financial system, and discusses how international law might address them.
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.