W. Travis Selmier II

• PhD
• Researcher at Indiana University Bloomington

This article introduces a special issue of Business and Politics on Property Rights, Financial Risk, and the Politics of a Networked Global Financial System . We introduce aspects of the articles in the issue and situate them within existing literatures in financial economics, public policy, political economy, regulation and governance, and network...

While the name ‘Silk Road’ connotes significant Chinese influence, in fact since the eighth century the old land route ran mostly through Islamic countries and areas, from present-day Xinjiang to Istanbul, and the old sea route passed through Islamic trading principalities for centuries. Modern Islamic economies, and concepts of Islamic economics,...

This chapter utilizes a paper we published in the Journal of International Business Studies (Selmier, Newenham-Kahindi & Oh, 2015, henceforth, JIBS paper). In our JIBS paper, we examined how the acquisition of languages, including lingua franca like Swahili, which is widely spoken in resource-rich East and Central Africa, might reduce pressures on...

The modern Chinese financial system has developed by innovating new, globally competitive financial technologies alongside traditional forms of financial intermediation. While cognizant of Western banking theory, China is pursuing a different path concerning financial intermediaries’ social responsibility to monitor financial contracts. In Western...

Caught between the Rock of financial regulation and the Hard Place which CSR [corporate social responsibility] has become, extractive MNEs are being pushed to conduct business in more transparent, sustainable, ethical ways. Extractive industry CSR has come to be judged, predominantly, through the lens of sustainable development, hardening around mu...

This chapter offers a discussion of the ideas proposed by Weiner (Journal of International Business Studies 36:576–587, 2005) in his paper titled “Speculation in international crises: report from the Gulf”, where in the author addresses issues critical to financial trading in regard to oil, national security policy, and the outcomes of crises, such...

China has had millennia of contact with the rest of Asia, while Sino-Sub-Saharan history is episodic and comparatively short due to: 1, maritime distance, 2, Chinese and African focus on their respective continents with their respective land-based enemies, and 3, China’s historic position as the center of global economics, receiving tribute from th...

Communities of Place (CofP¹) members’ rights concerning their livelihoods, social structures and sustainability empower them to judge the legitimacy of a mining MNE’s “social license to operate” by demanding efficacious, just CSR programs and projects. Many eyes monitor whether mining companies pursue sustainable development, but no eyes are more i...

Between China and Russia and East Asia and Europe, Kazakhstan’s strategic position on the New Silk Road empowers it as a logistics linchpin. Combining Kazakhstan’s geographic position, political stability, relatively high per capita income, highly developed energy sector and the fact that the old Silk Road ran along Kazakhstan’s southern border has...

chapter in Past, Present and Future of African-Asian Relations China has had millennia of contact with the rest of Asia, while Sino-Sub-Saharan history is episodic and comparatively short due to: 1, maritime distance, 2, Chinese and African focus on their respective continents with their respective land-based enemies, and 3, China’s historic posit...

China has always been a continental power rather than a sea power. Her history long-cycles between periods of global power projection and internal chaos caused, in part, by peoples and countries neighboring China’s west and northwest- that is, along the old Silk Road. This paper takes China’s marching westward concept to explore historical and mode...

Introduction This chapter utilizes a paper we published in the Journal of International Business Studies 1 [henceforth, JIBS paper]. In our JIBS paper, we examined how the acquisition of languages, including lingua franca like Swahili, which is widely spoken in resource-rich East and Central Africa, might reduce pressures on mining MNEs' legitimacy...

Chinese banks have opted for slow, organic growth in their overseas network expansion rather extensive bank acquisitions, but their future impacts on international banking and financial systems are expected to be large. This paper follows four interlinked paths: First, it sketches an institutional logics perspective on banking systems in China, Jap...

Between China and Russia, East Asia and Europe, Kazakhstan’s strategic position on the New Silk Road empowers it as a logistics linchpin. Kazakhstan’s logistical position is cemented by its political stability in Central Asia, its relatively higher per capita income, sophisticated service economy, highly developed energy sector, and the fact that t...

Caravanserai were large, walled inn complexes with stables, mosques and meeting places where traders, travelers and locals met to discuss trade, share information and rest. Maintained by empires, sheikdoms and khanates, caravanserai increased political and economic power of major trading centers along the old Silk Road. The New Silk Road Initiative...

In 2011, responding to a credit crunch, Wenzhou became the first and only municipality to institute complete financial reform. Wenzhou had been the fastest growing municipal economy in China’s fastest-growing province for two decades. But the global financial crisis hit hard the informal financial networks which funded small and medium-sized enterp...

Interaction between transnational mining companies (mining TNCs), governments, mining industry bodies and local communities is critical to advancing several of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Mining TNCs may be leaders or conspicuous laggards in this regard. Some larger mining companies have made significant corporate social responsibilit...

Avoidance of risk and increasing returns are the two main motivators in finance. Returns are better understood and perhaps more easily regulated than financial risk, which is a complex and slippery concept. Financial risk may be best conceived of as a complementary good, but the nature of this good varies as the size of the investment position scal...

The mining industry is regarded by many as the poster child for weak Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This view requires updating; while some mining companies are still caught engaging in bad behavior, others are at the forefront of global best practices in CSR. Mining CSR is complex and challenging: operations are extremely labor- and capita...

Effective financial policy design should incorporate design principles encouraging financial activity and innovation while discouraging excessive risk-taking, into an inclusive, environmental approach to financial system governance. Examining banking systems in Australia, Brazil, Canada and China – whose financial systems proved more resilient than...

This paper conceptualizes financial markets as virtual environments which should be subject to stewardship requirements found in natural environments. As in natural environments, irresponsible self-governance and lax or off-target regulation result in environmental damage and social loss. Watershed governance is proposed as the best-fitting analogy...

Over the four decades since the Four Modernizations program began in 1978, China has matured from a capital-starved, mono-bank-centric financial system to a capital-rich system with great variety of financial intermediation. This chapter plays off the double meaning of its title: first, it monitors the maturation in Chinese financial intermediation...

Purpose: Much of the criticism directed toward banking in China revolves around self-dealing in relationships between bankers and their clients. Corruption, nepotism, high levels of non-performing loans and the inefficiency of government-directed lending have all been laid at the door of embedded guanxi networks. While valid to an extent, this crit...

Advantages of speaking English as a native speaker have been discussed and debated widely. English has developed into a global lingua franca in business, culture, education and diplomacy. English “demand” includes institutional demands and individual demands for language to achieve better employment and enjoy English-language goods. Supply can be s...

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) encounter relentless stakeholder pressures when operating across linguistic, cultural and institutional boundaries. Our aims are to examine whether and how acquisition of language resources may help MNEs to bridge these boundaries and reduce pressures on MNE legitimacy by improving their corporate social responsibil...

This paper aims to present an alternative paradigm of financial risk to mitigate future financial crises. We argue that risk is not simply a feature of a financial product but a good in and of itself. Examining financial risk, we argue that it is most accurately typed as a common pool (particularly systemic risk) and so another approach to financia...

Purpose: This chapter discusses the influence of the United Nations Ten Principles [UNGC] on multinational mining companies’ (mining MNE) corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and strategies. Design/methodology/approach: Business ethics, mining management, CSR, stakeholder and social contracting literatures are integrated with case vign...

While northeastern Asian economies have grown at a stellar rate over the past 4 decades, during the same period, bank officials and financial market participants have been charged with corruption, nepotism, and government meddling and have incurred high levels of non-performing loans. The close relationships between financiers and their clients, a...

Establishing a BRICS development bank will require banking acumen, the capacity to embed private incentives into a governmental structure, striking a fine balance between economic development and political sense, impressive diplomatic skills and, quite frankly, luck.

建立一家金砖国家开发银行(BRICS-DB)需要银行业的敏锐头脑，需要将私人部门的激励机制融入政府机构中的能力，需要在经济发展和政治意识之间达到良好平衡,也需要相当的外交手腕。

Interview: Myanmar, large, resource-rich and suffering from a tragic modern history, has been reengineering its financial markets since 1993 with the advice of Daiwa Securities. Kazama, Daiwa’s point man in Myanmar, traces the promise, challenge, and international politics of the last great frontier market.

Banking is an international business; both information and capital flow relatively unimpeded across international borders. Banking institutions’ information stores have increased dramatically with the spread of computers, and these institutions protect data inside their firewalls from outside eyes, and from disaster, through establishing multiple s...

Interview: Cannataci provides a thirty-year sketch of IT law and explains banks’ frustrations in reconciling business operations with increasing government oversight. One of Europe’s top IT privacy lawyers and a financial security expert, he suggests what banks must consider when the needs of national security and banking IT management collide.

Tokuchi’s second interview in this special issue examines the maturation of Chinese finance. He explains the political complications of M&A when one party is a Chinese firm (inward and outward M&A) and the increasing resistance to Chinese firms’ acquisitions of foreign target firms.

Interview: John Succo, a 30-year Wall Street veteran, argues high-frequency trading causes severe disruption to securities markets while dark pools are beneficial. A superb primer and critique by an expert who co-founded what became one the world’s largest derivatives-trading hedge funds.

Interview: Considered China’s top investment banker, Ted Tokuchi is trilingual and tricultural [China, Japan, US]. He rejects “pre-conceived notions’- which he terms “Isms”- to argue for a global view of a global industry with global responsibility.

Guest editor's perspective for special issue on "the politics of international banking and finance."

This essay aims at highlighting the linkage between current international banking regulation (namely, that produced by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision) and economic activity, which is proxied by the S&P500 stock market index. It is revealed that the amount of regulatory documents published per year affects stock market performance, but o...

Although little-appreciated, banking has long consisted of types of club goods and club good market structures. Initially, merchant banks were clubs that consisted of a small number of partners and apprentices crafting trade finance and helping to finance wars. Mid-nineteenth-century investment bank partnerships employed their “reputational capital...

While the effects of cultural disparity and common institutional foundations on international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) have been much analyzed, little analysis of languages’ transaction costs has been done in either the international relations or international business literatures. This paper integrates literature from internationa...

Why are there many club goods, and club good market structures, in investment finance? Why has there been such a proliferation of these types of goods and transaction structures in modern finance? The answers lie in the motivations and methods of financial firms to segment, package and offset risk and to increase profit potential. This paper prese...

Utilising economic diplomacy theory, this study specifies a statistical model to reveal ASEAN members’ capacity to negotiate better international trade outcomes. Examining imports into ASEAN members from 134 nations between 1980 and 2001, we find that ASEAN’s diplomats were able to pursue more ‘value-claiming’ in economic diplomacy than expected. W...

While the impacts of culture on international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) have been much discussed, the influence of languages has been underappreciated in international business. We address this paucity by integrating literature from international economics, international business, Chinese business history, and linguistics to examine...

We examine the roles of major trade languages in international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. Empirical results confirm that speaking a common language increases trade and FDI flows, yet the effect of major languages is more substantial in FDI than in international trade. In addition, we find evidence of a hierarchy in transaction...

The recent financial crisis has brought on customary demands to reform and to rework governance regimes so that the next crisis will not be as intense or long-lived. To craft effective governance of any economic activity requires an effective yet flexible regulatory regime; to craft an effective yet flexible regulatory regime requires understanding...

Abstract will be provided by author.

We examine the roles of regional trade agreements (RTAs) not only in regionalization processes but also in globalization of trade. Results from various specifications of the gravity equation model confirm that a country can noticeably increase directional trade through diplomatic relations as well as through membership.

We examine the roles of regional trade agreements (RTAs) not only in regionalization processes but also in globalization of trade. Results from various specifications of the gravity equation model confirm that a country can noticeably increase directional trade through diplomatic relations as well as through membership.