What impact are new global financial standards having on low income countries? In the wake of the global financial crisis, industrialised countries have agreed a series of regulatory reforms to repair and regulate their own financial systems. All countries, including LICs, are encouraged to adopt these new global standards. Members of the G20 have asked the Financial Stability Board, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank to study how global banking initiatives will impact developing and emerging economies, identifying this area as a key policy concern in efforts to promote inclusive growth. To date, the scant research on this question almost exclusively addresses emerging market economies. LIC governments and advisers have voiced an urgent need for LIC-specific analysis. 

Over the next three years, a team of researchers to examine how low income countries (LICs) in Africa and South East Asia are affected by new global standards for regulating banks. The project will be among the very first to look at how political institutions and processes — at both the domestic and global levels — shape the impact of global banking initiatives on LICs and their ability to harness financial flows for inclusive growth. 

The team will be led by Dr Emily Jones and Professor Ngaire Woods from the Global Economic Governance Programme at the Blavatnik School of Government, and Professor Thorsten Beck from Cass Business School, and the project is funded by a grant worth £521,000 from the DFID-ESRC Growth Research Programme. 

The team includes researchers from academic institutions in Burkina Faso, Togo, Kenya, and Vietnam, and will involve close engagement with senior policymakers in LICs. The programme will combine the disciplinary approaches of political science and economics, and will draw on a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Outputs will include top-quality peer-reviewed academic publications and a series of tailored policy briefs.

Find out more about the DFID-ESRC Growth Research Programme