Global Economy, Regulation and Development (GEARED)
Since the onset of the global financial crisis in late summer 2008 a widespread consensus has emerged that the previous two decades of de-regulation, and related institutional dismantling, bear a considerable part of the burden of responsibility for the crisis. Correspondingly, a large number of proposals to re-regulate not only the financial sector but also the global economy more generally have emerged. In relation to the financial sector, they have concerned banking institutions, hedge funds, credit rating agencies and offshore financial centres – as well as specific markets ranging from commodity exchanges to over-the-counter derivatives trading.
A list of publications by the GEARED research unit for 2008-2011 can be found here (opens a pdf file)
The agenda of the research unit is structured along four sets of key questions on:
(1) The nature, scope and limitations of re-regulation
a) To what extent will the content and spirit of economic regulation be genuinely transformed in the medium term? And if so, which norms, ideas and conventions will be used to justify and implement re-regulatory efforts?
b) Will re-regulation follow substantially different trajectories in different national and regional contexts?
c) Will there be a new type of global financial regulation, or at least a common pattern of global regulation led by global institutions such as a reconfigured IMF?
d) How will economic institutions, both in developed and developing countries react to whatever regulatory landscape emerges?
(2) The tools, expertise and knowledge that are being mobilized in re-regulation efforts
a) What roles will ‘soft’ tools (such as benchmarking, codes of conduct, shame lists, voluntary standards and market-based instruments such as labeling) play vis a vis ‘hard’ regulation (mandatory standards, national legislation, international agreements) in such re-regulatory efforts?
b) What kinds of expertise and knowledge are being enrolled in such efforts? What makes them legitimate? In what ways are they mobilized?
(3) Re-regulation, developing countries and global value chains
a) How will re-regulation efforts in the financial sector impact directly or indirectly the functioning of the ‘real economy’ in developing countries?
b) How will re-regulation affect current efforts to maintain flows of credit to developing countries? How will it impact flows of trade finance and FDI? What will be the relative contribution of South-South flows?
c) How will the governance of global and regional value chains be affected? With what impacts on developing country actors and small-scale producers and operators in particular?
d) How will re-regulation dynamics interact with economic, social and environmental upgrading (and downgrading) trajectories in global value chains?
(4) The specific role that standards (on products, practices, corporate organization, policy) may be playing in re-regulatory efforts
a) How are new public and private standards concerning food safety, quality, and social and environmental sustainability playing out in relation to re-regulation?
b) What are the outcomes of attempts to address the possible exclusionary effects of such standards in developing countries?
c) What are the conditions under which conformity with standards is attained or not in developing countries, and what are the costs and benefits of attainment?
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