International cooperation has been a recurrent theme in each of the thirteen Geneva Reports on the World Economy published by CEPR and ICMB since 1999. The 2004 report, International Economic and Financial Cooperation: New Issues, New Actors, New Responses, analysed this issue in some depth. This report, the fourteenth in the series, picks up this issue once again, but this time the approach is different, the recommendations more cautious and incremental, and the prognosis bleaker. This is not surprising: the authors demonstrate very clearly why international cooperation is difficult at the best of times, and very difficult indeed in the midst of a severe financial crisis.
