Turbulent Waters: Cross-border Finance and International Governance Book

The world economy at the end of the twentieth century was afflicted with financial turbulence. Millions of people in emerging-market nations endured severe recessions, and many residents of wealthy nations also experienced losses. Some scholars describe this instability as a consequence of a progressively integrated global economy. Writing for the WASHINGTON POST, Jessica Mathews described an "enormous, several trillion-dollar pool of money that sloshes around in what is effectively a supranational cyberspace, moving by computer in and out of off-shore banks and chasing profits in twenty-four hour markets."

Spanning the disciplines of economics, finance, political economy, and international relations, this wide-ranging, analytical review is a mainstream "primer" for defining the issues and catalyzing a fruitful public debate. It is grounded in an exposition of the analytic fundamentals of financial activity, how those fundamentals apply to an integrating (but still far from perfectly integrated) world economy and financial system, and how the institutions of collective governance need to be adapted to that evolving world. In addition to its analytical overview, Turbulent Waters offers practical recommendations for the major financial challenges that policymakers will face during the first decades of the 21st century.