International Finance

Abstract

The onset of the global recession in 2008 pushed trade issues to the background of discussions on the management of the international political economy, and brought financial issues to the foreground. To a certain extent this change is a sign of the resilience of the global trading system. While the recession created a set of crises in global finance, the trading system has weathered the down-turn quite well. The set of norms underlying the trading system, of rules-based governance and nondiscrimination, has held up, and has prevented the sort of tariff increases and other trade-based beggar-thy-neighbor policies that caused the international economy to spiral down into the Great Depression in the early 1930s.