In his 1972 Janeway Lectures at Princeton, James Tobin, the 1981 Nobel Prize winner for economics, submitted a proposal for a levy on international currency transactions. The idea was not greeted with enthusiasm, as the 1970s were a period of optimism and confidence in floating exchange rages. Yet, whenever currency crises erupted during the past decades, the proposal for a levy on international currency transactions would once again arise. In the 1990s, two additional facts have sharpened interest in the Tobin tax proposal. First is the growing volume of foreign exchange trading. Second,...

This collection offers a new rationale and framework for international development cooperation. Its main argument is that in actual practice, development cooperation has already moved beyond aid (i.e. assistance to poor countries) and onto issues such as the ozone hole, global climate change, HIV, drug trafficking, and financial volatility. These issues are not poverty-related but instead concern global housekeeping, which helps to ensure an adequate provision of global public goods. Contributors include Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Jeffrey Sachs of the Harvard Institute...