Globalization and money – two concepts inextricably linked. In many ways the speed with which financial resources traverse the globe, the opportunities which this provides for the efficient allocation of resources, the possibilities which this creates for financial crises and traders who act as agents removed from the concerns of national citizens have come to symbolize the phenomenon, hopes and fears of ‘globalization’. However, inextricably linked they may be, but well understood they are not. In the case of national currencies, a wide variety of predictions and analyses can be found. For some, national currencies represent barriers to a seamless global economy. Others argue that national currencies will disappear due to the power of international financial markets which will force national governments to adopt more credible currencies and abandon their own. In contrast, others see imperialism or regionalism as the main challenges. Paul Bowles provides an innovative and systematic analysis of the implications of theories of globalization for national currencies. He critically examines whether, as a result, the world is heading for fewer currencies. He argues that the main ‘force of globalization’ which is endangering national currencies is that of globalization as ‘neoliberal globalism’. However there is no single neoliberal position on money and so the ‘contingent’ nature of neoliberalism explains why this particular force of globalization operates more strongly in some countries than others. This is demonstrated in case studies of four systemically significant currencies, namely, those of Australia, Canada, Mexico and Norway. National Currencies and Globalization will be of interest to researchers and students of International Political Economy, Politics, Economics and Finance.

Many questions have been raised about America's status in the increasingly interconnected global economy. Yet key factsâ€"such as the amount of foreign assets abroad owned by U.S. citizensâ€"are not known. The crucial data needed to assess the U.S. position are unavailable. This volume explores significant shortcomings in U.S. data on international capital transactions and their implications for policymakers. The volume offers clearcut recommendations for U.S. agencies to bring data collection and analyses of the global economy into the twenty-first century. The volume explores: How factors emerging since the early 1980s have shaped world financial markets and revealed shortcomings in data collection and analysis. How the existing U.S. data system works and where it fails how measurements of international financial transactions are recorded; and how swaps, options, and futures present special reporting problems. How alternative methods, such as collecting data, from sources such as global custodians and international clearinghouses, might improve coverage and accuracy.

Winner of the 2010 Hayek Book Prize given by the Manhattan Institute "Money, Markets and Sovereignty is a surprisingly easy read, given the complicated issues covered. In it, Mr. Steil and Mr. Hinds consistently challenge today's statist nostrums."—Doug Bandow, The Washington Times In this keenly argued book, Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds offer the most powerful defense of economic liberalism since F. A. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom more than sixty years ago. The authors present a fascinating intellectual history of monetary nationalism from the ancient world to the present and explore why, in its modern incarnation, it represents the single greatest threat to globalization. Steil and Hinds describe the current state of international economic relations as both unusual and precarious. Eras of economic protectionism have historically coincided with monetary nationalism, while eras of liberal trade have been accompanied by a universal monetary standard. But today, the authors show, an unprecedentedly liberal global trade regime operates side by side with the most extreme doctrine of monetary nationalism ever contrived—a situation bound to trigger periodic crises. Steil and Hinds call for a revival of the political and economic thinking that underlay earlier great periods of globalization, thinking that is increasingly under threat by more recent ideas about what sovereignty means.

Although investment patterns are being transformed, a global civil society is emerging, and governments are losing control of national currencies, the contributions in this book make it clear that globalization does not prohibit strong governments from maintaining a welfare state and good working conditions and co-operating to manage the flow of goods, money, people, and problems across borders.

The traditional assumption holds that the territory of money coincides precisely with the political frontiers of each nation state: France has the franc, the United Kingdom has the pound, the United States has the dollar. But the disparity between that simple mental landscape and the actual organization of currency spaces has grown in recent years, as territorial boundaries of individual states limit currency circulation less and less. Many currencies are used outside their "home" country for transactions either between nations or within foreign states. In this book, Benjamin J. Cohen asks what this new geography of money reveals about financial and political power. Cohen shows how recent changes in the geography of money challenge state sovereignty. He examines the role of money and the scope of cross-border currency competition in today's world. Drawing on new work in geography and network theory to explain the new spatial organization of monetary relations, Cohen suggests that international relations, political as well as economic, are being dramatically reshaped by the increasing interpenetration of national monetary spaces. This process, he explains, generates tensions and insecurities as well as opportunities for cooperation.

Why should each country have its own exclusive currency? Eric Helleiner offers a fascinating and unique perspective on this question in his accessible history of the origins of national money. Our contemporary understandings of national currency are, Helleiner shows, surprisingly recent. Based on standardized technologies of production and extraction, territorially exclusive national currencies emerged for the first time only during the nineteenth century. This major change involved a narrow definition of legal tender and the exclusion of tokens of value issued outside the national territory. "Territorial currencies" rapidly became bound up with the rise of national markets, and money reflected basic questions of national identity and self-presentation: In what way should money be managed to serve national goals? Whose pictures should go on the banknotes? Helleiner draws out the potent implications of this largely unknown history for today's context. Territorial currencies face challenges from many monetary innovations—the creation of the euro, dollarization, the spread of local currencies, and the prospect of privately issued electronic currencies. While these challenges are dramatic, the author argues that their significance should not be overstated. Even in their short historical life, territorial currencies have never been as dominant as conventional wisdom suggests. The future of this kind of currency, Helleiner contends, depends on political struggles across the globe, struggles that echo those at the birth of national money.

A powerful new understanding of global currency trends, including the rise of the Chinese yuan At first glance, the history of the modern global economy seems to support the long-held view that the currency of the world’s leading power invariably dominates international trade and finance. But in How Global Currencies Work, three noted economists overturn this conventional wisdom. Offering a new history of global finance over the past two centuries and marshaling extensive new data to test current theories of how global currencies work, the authors show that several national monies can share international currency status—and that their importance can change rapidly. They demonstrate how changes in technology and international trade and finance have reshaped the landscape of international currencies so that several international financial standards can coexist. In fact, they show that multiple international and reserve currencies have coexisted in the past—upending the traditional view of the British pound’s dominance before 1945 and the U.S. dollar’s postwar dominance. Looking forward, the book tackles the implications of this new framework for major questions facing the future of the international monetary system, including how increased currency competition might affect global financial stability.

As awareness of the process of globalization grows and the study of its effects becomes increasingly important to governments and businesses (as well as to a sizable opposition), the need for historical understanding also increases. Despite the importance of the topic, few attempts have been made to present a long-term economic analysis of the phenomenon, one that frames the issue by examining its place in the long history of international integration. This volume collects eleven papers doing exactly that and more. The first group of essays explores how the process of globalization can be measured in terms of the long-term integration of different markets-from the markets for goods and commodities to those for labor and capital, and from the sixteenth century to the present. The second set of contributions places this knowledge in a wider context, examining some of the trends and questions that have emerged as markets converge and diverge: the roles of technology and geography are both considered, along with the controversial issues of globalization's effects on inequality and social justice and the roles of political institutions in responding to them. The final group of essays addresses the international financial systems that play such a large part in guiding the process of globalization, considering the influence of exchange rate regimes, financial development, financial crises, and the architecture of the international financial system itself. This volume reveals a much larger picture of the process of globalization, one that stretches from the establishment of a global economic system during the nineteenth century through the disruptions of two world wars and the Great Depression into the present day. The keen analysis, insight, and wisdom in this volume will have something to offer a wide range of readers interested in this important issue.

The market for financial derivatives is far and away the largest and most powerful market in the world, and it is growing exponentially. In 1970 the yearly valuation of financial derivatives was only a few million dollars. By 1980 the sum had swollen to nearly one hundred million dollars. By 1990 it had climbed to almost one hundred billion dollars, and in 2000 it approached one hundred trillion. Created and sustained by a small number of European and American banks, corporations, and hedge funds, the derivatives market has an enormous impact on the economies of nations—particularly poorer nations—because it controls the price of money. Derivatives bought and sold by means of computer keystrokes in London and New York affect the price of food, clothing, and housing in Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, and Buenos Aires. Arguing that social theorists concerned with globalization must familiarize themselves with the mechanisms of a world economy based on the rapid circulation of capital, Edward LiPuma and Benjamin Lee offer a concise introduction to financial derivatives. LiPuma and Lee explain how derivatives are essentially wagers—often on the fluctuations of national currencies—based on models that aggregate and price risk. They describe how these financial instruments are changing the face of capitalism, undermining the power of nations and perpetrating a new and less visible form of domination on postcolonial societies. As they ask: How does one know about, let alone demonstrate against, an unlisted, virtual, offshore corporation that operates in an unregulated electronic space using a secret proprietary trading strategy to buy and sell arcane financial instruments? LiPuma and Lee provide a necessary look at the obscure but consequential role of financial derivatives in the global economy.

For a century, economists have driven forward the cause of globalization in financial institutions, labour markets, and trade. Yet there have been consistent warning signs that a global economy and free trade might not always be advantageous. Where are the pressure points? What could be done about them? Dani Rodrik examines the back-story from its seventeenth-century origins through the milestones of the gold standard, the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the Washington Consensus, to the present day. Although economic globalization has enabled unprecedented levels of prosperity in advanced countries and has been a boon to hundreds of millions of poor workers in China and elsewhere in Asia, it is a concept that rests on shaky pillars, he contends. Its long-term sustainability is not a given. The heart of Rodrik’s argument is a fundamental 'trilemma': that we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. Give too much power to governments, and you have protectionism. Give markets too much freedom, and you have an unstable world economy with little social and political support from those it is supposed to help. Rodrik argues for smart globalization, not maximum globalization.