Gallagher Publishes New Book: “Ruling Capital”
Kevin Gallagher, associate professor at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, has published a new book with Cornell University Press.
Ruling Capital: Emerging Markets and the Re-Regulation of Cross Border Finance was released in Feb. 2015.
“It is thrilling to hold in my hands something that was just an idea back in 2009,” said Gallagher. “And it couldn’t come at a better time. Turbulence has returned to emerging markets. Hopefully this book can help scholars and policy-makers think of new ways to regulate finance for stability and prosperity.”
In the book, Gallagher demonstrates how several emerging market and developing countries (EMDs) managed to reregulate cross-border financial flows in the wake of the global financial crisis, despite the political and economic difficulty of doing so at the national level. Gallagher also shows that some EMDs, particularly the BRICS coalition, were able to maintain or expand their sovereignty to regulate cross-border finance under global economic governance institutions. Gallagher combines econometric analysis with in-depth interviews with officials and interest groups in select emerging markets and policymakers at the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the G-20 to explain key characteristics of the global economy.
Gallagher develops a theory of countervailing monetary power that shows how emerging markets can counter domestic and international opposition to the regulation of cross-border finance. Although many countries were able to exert countervailing monetary power in the wake of the crisis, such power was not sufficient to stem the magnitude of unstable financial flows that continue to plague the world economy. Drawing on this theory, Gallagher outlines the significant opportunities and obstacles to regulating cross-border finance in the twenty-first century.
More information on the book, including an online order link, can be found via the Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI), which Gallagher co-chairs. GEGI is a research program of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. It was founded in 2008 to advance policy-relevant knowledge about governance for financial stability, human development, and the environment.
In addition to Ruling Capital, Gallagher is also the author of The Clash of Globalizations: Essays on Trade and Development Policy; The Dragon in the Room: China and the Future of Latin American Industrialization (with Roberto Porzecanski); The Enclave Economy: Foreign Investment and Sustainable Development in Mexico’s Silicon Valley (with Lyuba Zarsky); and Free Trade and the Environment: Mexico, NAFTA, and Beyond.
Gallagher has edited or co-edited a number of books, including Rethinking Foreign Investment for Sustainable Development: Lessons from Latin America (with Daniel Chudnovsky) and Putting Development First: the Importance of Policy Space in the WTO and IFIs.
To order Ruling Capital or for more information, please click here.