Deep Integration and Trade Agreements

Abstract

This chapter looks at financial crises as a challenge to the international financial system and investigates the “public bad” nature of the phenomenon. The conclusion: excessive financial volatility is a global public bad. Instability is not purely a technical by‐product of the production of financial services. Rather, it is the outcome of market failures, for reasons not yet fully understood. Having laid out this diagnosis, the chapter looks at how existing institutions and policies deal with international financial instability, both to limit its acuity and to deal with its implications. The main emphasis is on drawing lessons from recent experiences (Europe, Mexico, and East Asia) and recent theoretical advances, especially those that have improved our understanding of crises. The chapter presents five main proposals. (1) Proceed with caution in promoting capital liberalization; (2) avoid the restrictive macroeconomic policies, huge loans, and deep structural policies of recent packages; (3) complement today's ex post conditionality with ex ante conditionality; (4) suspend debt repayment in the event of a major crisis accompanied by a collapse of the exchange rate; and (5) end the monopoly of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by creating regional IMFs.

The Integration of Stock Exchanges: The Case of the Latin American Integrated Market (MILA) and its Impact on Ownership And Internationalization Status in Colombian Brokerage Firms

“…Another general benefit of these treaties is the promotion of trade around the world (Birdsall & Lawrence, 1999). This can be evidenced, as previously stated, in the current existence of more than 200 Regional Agreements in force, (WTO, 2014) that account for more than half of international trade (OECD, 2014).…”

“…For instance, when pursuing commerce activities within a regional agreement, the signatory parties get internal advantages that exclude external parties, i.e. tariff reduction, free movement of capital, labor, and common investment policies, among others (Birdsall & Lawrence, 1999;Baldwin & Venables, 1995). The above, contributes to strengthen the region and allow countries to negotiate strategically as a block (Whalley, 1998).…”

Global public goods for health: weaknesses and opportunities in the global health system

“…First, improved data are needed to develop a clearer picture of how much money is currently going to providing which types of GPGs. As several researchers have pointed out, existing data collection systems are not well suited to identifying spending on GPGs and new methods of monitoring such information need to be developed (Blanchet et al ., 2013; Birdsall and Diofasi, 2014; Schäferhoff et al ., 2015). To gain some intuition on current financing levels one could begin by looking at some existing categories of GPGs.…”

Transnational mercantilism and the emergent global trading order

“…1 Works which discuss the new trade agenda include: Ostry (1997Ostry ( , 2000, Cable (1996), Feteketuky (1992), Sauvé and Zampetti (2000), Birdsall and Lawrence (1999). For one of the first study in this perspective, see Blackhurst (1981).…”