Marco Arnone and Leonardo S. Borlini, Corruption: Economic Analysis and International Law, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014, 672 pp, hb £112.50.
| Date | 01 September 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12153 |
| Published date | 01 September 2015 |
Marco Arnone and Leonardo S. Borlini,Corruption: Economic Analysis and
International Law, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014, 672 pp, hb
£112.50.
Corruption represents one of the most serious economic and societal prob-
lems. Recent years have seen increasing international anti-corruption regula-
tory efforts aimed at mitigating this threat. In this book, Marco Arnore and
Leonardo Borlini offer a timely and highly articulate analysis of the socio-
institutional effects, economic costs and global dimension of corruption.
Through an exhaustive review of the economic literature and innovative theo-
retical insights, the book shows a way to assess the effectiveness of anti-
corruption legal instruments.
In one sense, the main objective of the book is to illustrate the complex nature
of corruption by reviewing how and why this phenomenon undermines eco-
nomic and socio-institutional processes. Arnone and Borlini also provide a
comprehensive mapping of international and national anti-corruption legal insti-
tutions. The book however at root addresses a much larger issue, providing a
plain statement of how regulation of financial markets can achieve ‘measurable
improvements in people’s welfare’ (8). In this regard, the global financial crisis,
which showed that we did not fully appreciate the potential of corruption, was
a hard lesson to learn. In order to prevent future collapses of the financial system,
the authors believe that corporate, market, and macroeconomic governance are
key in fine-tuning the system, and managing financial institutions from evolving
into fraud (9).
Economists and lawyers have an important role in this discourse. However, in
order to be relevant they both need to adapt their research approaches to new
requirements of global business. From financial instruments with their ‘specula-
tive’ character to multinational corporate structures, researchers should seek to
identify individual elements of the markets and their properties, and explain how
and with what effects corruption could affect their functioning. Only then will
we have sufficient insights to adopt effective international legal measures. These
are exactly the issues, which the two constituent parts of the book (‘Economics,
Finance and Governance’ and ‘Birth and Evolution of a Global Anti-Corruption
Legal Standard’) discuss. Economics and law are two necessary complements of
an effective fight against corruption; both, however, must be more innovative.
Economists need to change the criteria they use to reach normative conclu-
sions because they too often rely on those defined by market players. As the
authors contend, however, market players should not be the primary judges of
what is good or bad for society because they are in a permanent conflict of
interest, which is in turn the main source of corruption and mismanagement.
Rather, citizens should decide what is positive or negative in, for instance,
finance and the functioning of its institutions, such as banks and hedge funds (8).
From this perspective, if the complexity of globalised markets does not lead to
measurable improvements in people’s welfare, economists should advise policy-
makers on how to make market structures simpler, even if this would lead to the
limitation of the market.
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© 2015 The Author. The Modern Law Review © 2015 The Modern Law Review Limited. 909(2015) 78(5) MLR 883–911
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