This timely book points the way towards a new positive regulatory framework for international investment following the failure of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). It examines the flaws in free-market strategies underpinning the recent phase of globalization, in particular drawing out the lessons from the MAI, which was suspended in October 1998. The authors explore an alternative based on a positive regulatory framework for international business aimed at maximizing the positive contribution to development of foreign investment and minimizing its negative social and environmental impacts. The contributors include academics, researchers for non-governmental organizations, and business and trade-union representatives, writing from a combination of economic, legal and political perspectives. The book combines academic analysis with grass-roots and practical experience, and suggests concrete policy proposals.

This timely volume points the way towards a new positive regulatory framework for international investment, following the failure of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). It examines the flaws in free market strategies underpinning the recent phase of globalization, in particular drawing out the lessons from the MAI, which was suspended in October 1998. The authors explore an alternative based on a positive regulatory framework for international business, aimed at maximizing the positive contribution to development of foreign investment and minimizing it's negative social and environmental impacts. The contributors include academics, researchers for non governmental organizations, and business and trade union representatives, writing from a combination of economic, legal and political perspectives. The book combines academic analysis with grass roots and practical experience, and suggests concrete policy proposals.

This analysis of how multi-level networked governance has superseded the liberal system of interdependent states focuses on the role of law in mediating power and shows how lawyers have shaped the main features of capitalism, especially the transnational corporation. It covers the main institutions regulating the world economy, including the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and a myriad of other bodies, and introduces the reader to key regulatory arenas: corporate governance, competition policy, investment protection, anti-corruption rules, corporate codes and corporate liability, international taxation, avoidance and evasion and the campaign to combat them, the offshore finance system, international financial regulation and its contribution to the financial crisis, trade rules and their interaction with standards especially for food safety and environmental protection, the regulation of key services (telecommunications and finance), intellectual property and the tensions between exclusive private rights and emergent forms of common and collective property in knowledge.

The 1980s and 1990s have witnessed the emergence of globalized markets accompanied by an uneven process of national and international deregulation and re-regulation. The combined activities of transnational corporations in manufacturing industries (moving towards the global factory) and the newly privatized businesses in the energy, telecommunications and transportation sectors have fuelled an unprecedented growth in global markets and international business networks. The unexpected but now well established development of capitalism in eastern Europe and the boom in China's special economic zones have added still further to the opportunities and risks inherent in the rapidly developing global economy. For lawyers, economists, and political scientists one of the most significant aspects of the emergence of global markets is the question of regulation: how to regulate market access, product safety, consumer protection laws, financial services, probity and capital adequacy as well as anti-trust and competition laws and policies. Businesses complain that regulatory requirements frequently hinder the development of new markets. At the same time greater public awareness and concern, especially over other global issues such as environment protection, have raised the cost implications of regulatory requirements, sometimes astronmically. The essays in this volume attempt to address the success of efforts in the European Community, the US and elsewhere in the world to regulate in such a way as to accomodate both the interests of business and the wider interests of the public. The volume is divided into several sections, the first which deals with the globalization of regulatory processes. Other sections examine regulatory competition in the field of company law, self-regulation and competition in US corporate law; regulatory regimes in the European Union and the issue of regulatory coordination affecting economic and social insterests. This is an original and wide-ranging collection of essays which will attract a broad readership both in the US and Europe.

This volume brings together lawyers, accountants, sociologists and economists to explore some central themes of the legal and organizational accountability of the public corporation. The papers offer the first sustained attempt to transcend the institutionalist and contractarian visions which, during the 1980s, became the mainstream perspectives in corporate analysis.

In the twentieth century the application of national taxes to income from international business has created complex yet fascinating issues. The co-ordination of national jurisdiction to tax international income has rested formally on a network of bilateral treaties, but its practical administration has relied on a community of specialists; business advisers on the one hand and national officials on the other. The rapid growth of transnational corporations has put great pressure on the international tax system, especially due to the increasing difficulty of ensuring that the internal transfer prices between related firms in different countries reflect a fair and acceptable allocation of costs and profits. Furthermore, the widespread use of intermediary companies formed in tax havens has led to complex counter-measures and a constant process of treaty renegotiation and interaction with national law. The increasingly close administrative co-operation of tax authorities has been criticized as secretive and often arbitrary. Yet proposals for a more comprehensive framework and clearer legitimizing principles and procedures have conflicted with both the vested interests of international firms and with sensitivities about national sovereignity. But major reforms are necessary, even if implemented piecemeal.

Using perspectives from law, economics and social science, this book provides a systematic introduction to the major problems of international taxation of business income. In doing so, it retrieves important policy issues that have become buried in technical intricacies of the international taxation system.