Originally published in 2004 in The Business Economist, volume 35, issue 1. The original publication day is unrecorded.

Benu Schneider, ed, Palgrave Macmillan in association with Overseas Development Institute, 2003, 247 pages, £50.00.

From The Business Economist, volume 35, issue 1 (2004).

Since the East Asian crisis in the late 1990s the international community has been involved in strengthening the international financial system and international financial architecture. The establishment of the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) in 1999, by the G7 countries, representing the developed countries, was an important step in this direction. The Forum supported the adoption of internationally recognized standards or codes of good practice to deal with some of the dangers inherent in globalization. The FSF has identified over 60 standards and the G7 and multilateral financial institutions have endorsed twelve of these standards and codes as being essential for financial stability. Although this initiative brings many benefits in terms of increased transparency it is not unproblematic from the perspective of developing countries. This volume reflects the perspective of developing countries as well as those of private market participants and developed countries.

The book is divided into four parts. Part One, which is focused on developing countries’ perspectives and experience, is by far the largest and consists of five chapters. The first two chapters by Benu Schneider and Aziz Ali Mohammed are concerned with various implications of implementing financial standards and codes in developing countries. The remaining chapters in this part, by T C A Anant, Javier Guzman Calafell and Andrew Walter, are based on case studies of India, Mexico and East Asia. The articles in Part Two by Alastair Clark and Axel Nawrath reflect developed-country perspectives. Part Three is concerned with private-sector perspectives. Lionel Price, Michael Metcalfe and Avinash Persaud, Michael Bates and David Lubin are the authors in this part. The book has also an invited commentary by Y V Reddy and Andrew Cornford, which is in Part Four.

These papers raise certain fundamental issues involved in implementation of internationally-recognized standards or codes of good practice. The problems include, though are not confined to: the ownership of reforms from the point of view of developing countries; the suitability of the World Bank and IMF as monitoring agencies to oversee the process of implementation in developing countries; and the costs of implementation and monitoring in developing countries.

The main weakness of the book is that the case studies in Part One do not highlight the relevance of cases for policy formulation.

The book, however, is very accessible and is of particular interest to policy makers as well as academics.

Parvin Alizadeh Department of Economics, London Metropolitan University

Archived source: 2004-08-17 website capture.