Joe Perkins writes:

Mishkin argues that financial globalisation can ‘generate huge benefits for emerging market economies’. Investment in the world’s poorer regions will take off, as rich countries with limited investment opportunities at home invest in countries with greater potential for development, so that both parties benefit. In this way, late Victorian Britain transformed itself from the workshop of the world to its financier, with net overseas investment, at its peak, approaching a tenth of annual output. According to Mishkin, financial globalisation will also allocate funds more effectively within countries; foreign investors, he argues, are more likely to lend to firms that have good ideas, not just political connections.

(LRB 7 June 2007)

Princeton | hardback 310 pp. |ISBN: 9780691121543