I am interested in understanding the social, cultural and ethical underpinnings of the international economic system—and in figuring out their political consequences. I do so by studying our various efforts to govern the global financial system, including those used by institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

I have become particularly interested in the current financial crisis, and have written a number of pieces reflecting on the sources of the subprime crisis and on some of the lessons that we might draw for the future.

This recent work draws on some of the ideas that I first developed in my book, The Limits of Transparency, which takes a historical look at the inherently ambiguous and unstable nature of international financial markets and suggests that governance mechanisms that accomodate a certain measure of constructive ambiguity are likely to more effective than those that deny the instability of markets seek to pursue perfect transparency.

In addition to my work on the subprime crisis, my current research is organized around several related themes: a project on Governing the Margins examines the shifts in the IMF and World Bank's policies towards low income and emerging market countries since the mid-1990s, trying to understand what is driving the changes and what their implications are for the character of global authority. A further project on Cultural Political Economy, pursued jointly with my colleague Matthew Paterson, seeks to understand the cultural constitution of contemporary economic practices. I am also working with Alexandra Gheciu on another project, Public/Private Interaction and the Transformation of Global Governance, which brings together a range of scholars to look at the ways in which governance practices in both economic and security realms are redrawing the traditional boundaries between public and private.