The Global Institutions Research Programme (GEI) is a series of sixteen linked research programmes funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain. The programme focuses on how existing global economic institutions and regimes operate, how they might be improved and whether new institutions are needed. The series explains the findings of the GEI research programme. Topics covered by the five titles in the series are: An overview volume on the reform of global economic institutions; The Asian Financial Crisis; The World Bank; governance in the global economy: and Europe, Asia, and International Economic Development: A Shared Global Agenda? The editor of the Global Economic Institutions series is Professor David Vines of Balliol College, Oxford. Professor Vines is also the Director of the Global Ecomonic Institutions (GEI) Research Programme of the ESRC as well as a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London and an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the Australian National University.