What are the links between things as diverse as the prices of pork bellies, interest rates, and corporate stock? They are all being translated into risk and priced through the system of derivative markets. Financial derivatives are now the largest form of financial transaction in the world, and they are transforming in pervasive ways the lived experience of capitalist economies. Financial derivatives are anchoring the global financial system and challenging the conventional understanding of ownership, money and capital. These challenges are examined in this book, providing a significant reinterpretation of contemporary capitalism that will be of interest to both social scientists and conventional finance scholars. 

Economics is undergoing important shifts in focus and theoretical orientation. In part, this has been a response to the need to address changing economic circumstances, including the collapse of communism, globalisation and financial volatility. In addressing those problems economists have also been forced to re-examine many long held principles and approaches. This book is a collection of essays addressing themes that are part of that process of critical re-evaluation: exchange rate regimes, internationalisation of investment, and the economics of transition. The book brings these issues together in a way that draws out some of the common themes and issues as well the current frontier of research in each area. It will be of interest to economists as well as those concerned with the way economics as a discipline has been addressing important questions about the world we are living in as well as how history can help us to understand it.