An Economist Best Book of the Year A Financial Times Best Book of the Year A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year A ProMarket Best Political Economy Book of the Year One of The Week's Ten Best Business Books of the Year A cutting-edge look at how accelerating financial change, from the end of cash to the rise of cryptocurrencies, will transform economies for better and worse. We think we've seen financial innovation. We bank from laptops and buy coffee with the wave of a phone. But these are minor miracles compared with the dizzying experiments now underway around the globe, as businesses and governments alike embrace the possibilities of new financial technologies. As Eswar Prasad explains, the world of finance is at the threshold of major disruption that will affect corporations, bankers, states, and indeed all of us. The transformation of money will fundamentally rewrite how ordinary people live. Above all, Prasad foresees the end of physical cash. The driving force won't be phones or credit cards but rather central banks, spurred by the emergence of cryptocurrencies to develop their own, more stable digital currencies. Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies themselves will evolve unpredictably as global corporations like Facebook and Amazon join the game. The changes will be accompanied by snowballing innovations that are reshaping finance and have already begun to revolutionize how we invest, trade, insure, and manage risk. Prasad shows how these and other changes will redefine the very concept of money, unbundling its traditional functions as a unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value. The promise lies in greater efficiency and flexibility, increased sensitivity to the needs of diverse consumers, and improved market access for the unbanked. The risk is instability, lack of accountability, and erosion of privacy. A lucid, visionary work, The Future of Money shows how to maximize the best and guard against the worst of what is to come.

This book assesses the role of the doctrine of insurable interest within modern insurance law by examining its rationales and suggesting how shortcomings could be fixed. Over the centuries, English law on insurable interest - a combination of statutes and case law - has become complex and unclear. Other jurisdictions have relaxed, or even abolished, the requirement for an insurable interest. Yet, the UK insurance industry has overwhelmingly supported the retention of the doctrine of insurable interest. This book explores whether the traditional justifications for the doctrine - the policy against wagering, the prevention of moral hazard and the doctrine's relationship with the indemnity principle - still stand up to scrutiny and argues that, far from being obsolete, they have acquired new significance in the global financial markets and following the liberalisation of gambling. It is also argued that the doctrine of insurable interest is an integral part of a system of insurance contract law rules and market practice. Rather than rejecting the doctrine, the book recommends a recalibration of insurable interest to afford better pre-contractual transparency to a proposer as to the suitability of the policy to his or her interest in the subject-matter to be insured. Providing a powerful defence for the retention of insurable interest, this book will appeal to both academics and practitioners working in the field of insurance law.