Negotiating the World Economy. By John S. Odell. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii, 252. $45.00, cloth; $19.95, paper

This is a book about bilateral bargaining between countries over economic issues such as trade and finance. As such it is of great interest to economic historians, who often need to understand why countries entered into specific treaties or established certain relations with other countries. However, in some respects it is an uncomfortable book for economists. This is so because the book is written from the point of view of the discipline of International Relations, which, unlike economics, does not have a well-developed theory. The author recognizes this and his objective in the book is precisely to take some first steps towards developing “…a better grounded and more useful theory” (p. 17). He is not after something similar to game theory or other formal models that economists have already developed. He reviews this literature, and although he recognizes its many strengths, he has strong reservations about the rationality assumption and the many simplifications that are necessary to make the models tractable. Under such circumstances it turns out that outcomes are determined by background conditions, that is, the parameters of the model, and therefore negotiation ends up having no role. That is, whichever economic diplomat a country sends to negotiate a treaty would reach the same end result.