UCL's Institute for Global Law / IUS Commune Lecture Series presents

Macroeconomic Co-operation and International Law

on Wednesday 23 May, from 6-7pm

Speaker:

Professor Eric Posner
(University of Chicago)

Chair:
Professor Philippe Sands QC (UCL) 

About the lecture
The macroeconomic policies of states can produce significant harms and benefits for other states, yet international macroeconomic cooperation has been one of the weakest areas of international law. We ask why states have had such trouble cooperating over macroeconomic issues, when they have been relatively successful at cooperation over related issues like trade. We argue that although the theoretical benefits of macroeconomic cooperation are real, in practice it is difficult to sustain because states’ macroeconomic interests are diverse and frequently change over time, creating end-game problems for individual governments; the benefits require cooperation among a large group of states rather than small groups or pairs, so that free-riding becomes a problem; and there is a great deal of uncertainty about optimal policy. For these reasons, robust macroeconomic cooperation across populations may require monetary unification, which itself is frequently impossible and in any event raises numerous, even more complex issues for states. The European monetary union, the Bretton Woods Systems, and the gold standard are discussed.

About the speaker
Eric Posner is Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law and Aaron Director Research Scholar at the University of Chicago. His books include Law and Social Norms (Harvard 2000); Chicago Lectures in Law and Economics (Foundation 2000) (editor); Cost-Benefit Analysis: Legal, Economic, and Philosophical Perspectives (University of Chicago 2001) (editor, with Matthew Adler); The Limits of International Law (Oxford 2005) (with Jack Goldsmith); New Foundations of Cost-Benefit Analysis (Harvard 2006) (with Matthew Adler); Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts (Oxford 2007) (with Adrian Vermeule); Climate Change Justice (Princeton 2010) (with David Weisbach); and The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic (Oxford 2011) (with Adrian Vermeule). He is also an editor of the Journal of Legal Studies. He has published articles on bankruptcy law, contract law, international law, cost-benefit analysis, constitutional law, and administrative law, and has taught courses on international law, foreign relations law, contracts, employment law, bankruptcy law, secured transactions, and game theory and the law. His current research focuses on international law, immigration law, and foreign relations law. He is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School.