Biases in Global Markets: Can the Forces of Inequity and Marginalisation be Modified?

Abstract

Marketisation was a universal phenomenon in the 1980s — in developed countries under the influence of monetarism and the leadership of Thatcher and Reagan, in the developing countries largely as a result of pressure from the IMF and World Bank, and in Eastern Europe, with the collapse of communism. The advance of markets was both a domestic and an international development. The progressive dominance of domestic markets arose largely as a result of conscious political decisions. While these also influenced global markets, their advance was as much the product of forces outside conscious control — including technology change and especially the communications revolution, migratory forces, and institutional developments. Domestically, marketisation meant reduced state interventions, reduced subsidisation and increased privatisation. Internationally, global markets became increasingly important while systems of regulating these markets were haphazard, biased, non-existent or in retreat.