In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the regulation of the world's enormous derivatives markets assumed center stage on the international public policy agenda. Critics argued that loose regulation had contributed to the momentous crisis, but lasting reform has been difficult to implement since. Despite the global importance of derivatives markets, they remain mysterious and obscure to many. In Governing the World's Biggest Market, Eric Helleiner, Stefano Pagliari, and Irene Spagna have gathered an international cast of contributors to rectify this relative neglect. They examine how G20 governments have developed a coordinated international agenda to enhance control over these markets, which had been allowed to grow largely unchecked before the crisis. In analyzing this reform agenda, they advance three core arguments: first, the agenda to rein in these enormous markets has many limitations; second, the reform process has been plagued by delays, inconsistencies, and tensions that fragment the governance of these markets; and third, the politics driving the reforms have been extremely complicated. An authoritative overview of how this vast system is governed, Governing the World's Biggest Market looks at how the goals, limitations, and outcomes of post-crisis initiatives to regulate these markets have been influenced by a complex combination of transnational, inter-state, and domestic political dynamics. Moreover, this volume emphasizes how crucial regulatory reform is to stabilizing the global economy long-term.

"Governing the World's Biggest Market is the kind of book that everyone agrees we need, but few people actually sit down and write. Out-of-control derivatives markets had been a central villain in many accounts of the 2007/08 Global Financial Crisis and thus a candidate for root and branch overhaul. Helleiner, Pagliari, and Spagna do us an invaluable service by dissecting the decade of regulatory changes since then. The even-handed and erudite accounts in this volume reveal why reforms have remained patchy without jumping to simplistic conclusions." --Daniel Mügge, Political Science Department, University of Amsterdam "We have remarkably few accounts of the politics of derivatives markets. This extraordinary collection tackles the question of whether these 'financial weapons of mass destruction' can be adequately regulated, while brilliantly articulating the challenges ahead for the global system." --Kathleen McNamara, Professor of Government and Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Eric Helleiner is Professor in the Department of Political Science and Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and presently serves as co-editor of the book series Cornell Studies in Money. He has authored and edited ten books, of which the most recent include Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods (2014), The Status Quo Crisis (2014), and The Great Wall of Money (2014). Stefano Pagliari is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Politics at City, University of London. His research has been published in journals such as International Organization, Review of International Political Economy, and Socio-Economic Review. Irene Spagna is a Ph.D. candidate in Global Governance and Global Political Economy at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo.