Financing Development: The Power of Regionalism

Abstract

The historic 2002 United Nations Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, overlooked a crucial question: regionalism. Financing Development: The Power of Regionalism is designed to correct this omission. Editors Nancy Birdsall and Liliana Rojas-Suarez call for a more open and radical regionalism. They argue that far from undermining multilateral arrangements, as some critics fear, regional agreements can promote greater integration into the global system. Benefits include lower trade barriers, shared infrastructure investments and enhanced cooperation in the development of financial markets. The papers in the book are drawn from a roundtable discussion organized by the Center for Global Development and the Institute for International Economics ahead of the Monterrey conference. The volume also offers fresh insights on how regional development banks can catalyze collective action.