Derivatives and Development

Derivatives and Development engages recent efforts to deploy derivatives as tools for economic development. Even as these complex financial instruments are indicted for their role in the global food and financial crises, they are elsewhere hailed as innovative solutions to poverty and insecurity in rural Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The critical analysis undertaken here reveals that derivatives leave much to be desired as development tools. Breger Bush argues that derivatives markets work in the development context as engines of inequality and instability, aggravating poverty among those they are purported to help and highlighting some of the dangers of neoliberal globalization for the poor.