financial markets suggests that factors such as differences in capital requirements, limi tations on size or on the range of financial activities in which firms can engage, govern ment guarantee arrangements for deposits or payments, and reporting or disclosure requirements can have important effects on the efficiency of industrial and commercial firms and thus on the international competitive positions of major sectors of the U.S. economy. Regulatory and tax policies must therefore take into account effects on inter national competitive positions in addition to domestic concerns. The articles in this issue analyze differences in market organization and regulation across countries and examine how efficiency in producing financial services is influenced by these differences. These articles were presented and discussed at a conference sponsored by the Amer ican Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., on May 31 and June 1, 1990. This confer ence on International Competitiveness in Financial Services brought to the attention of Washington policy officials these analyses by leading scholars in finance. Publication of these studies and critiques in the Journal of Financial Services Research is intended to stimulate further interest in research on these important issues.

Offers a new approach to the legal issues raised by the drive for convergence in securities regulation. The author offers an informed and insightful examination of the implications for regulatory and policy design if regulatory convergence were to be rigorously implemented.

Global private regulations—who wins, who loses, and why Over the past two decades, governments have delegated extensive regulatory authority to international private-sector organizations. This internationalization and privatization of rule making has been motivated not only by the economic benefits of common rules for global markets, but also by the realization that government regulators often lack the expertise and resources to deal with increasingly complex and urgent regulatory tasks. The New Global Rulers examines who writes the rules in international private organizations, as well as who wins, who loses--and why. Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli examine three powerful global private regulators: the International Accounting Standards Board, which develops financial reporting rules used by corporations in more than a hundred countries; and the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission, which account for 85 percent of all international product standards. Büthe and Mattli offer both a new framework for understanding global private regulation and detailed empirical analyses of such regulation based on multi-country, multi-industry business surveys. They find that global rule making by technical experts is highly political, and that even though rule making has shifted to the international level, domestic institutions remain crucial. Influence in this form of global private governance is not a function of the economic power of states, but of the ability of domestic standard-setters to provide timely information and speak with a single voice. Büthe and Mattli show how domestic institutions' abilities differ, particularly between the two main standardization players, the United States and Europe.