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Keohane has written an immensely informative, easily readable, and definitive summary of the current state of innovative financing around the world. While taking great pains to distinguish financial innovation, which seeks to increase profit, from innovative financing, which seeks to improve social and economic problems, she couches the need for microcredit and innovative financing in terms of economic market failure, outlining not only the need for such programs in the US and around the world but also the rationale for both public and private intervention (especially in partnership) in these markets. Insisting that other nations need to be able to finance innovations in emissions reduction, health improvement, and reduction in climate change effect, the understanding of incentive structures and agency provision is woven throughout the book. While this book breaks no new ground in terms of new innovations, it does place multiple forms of financial innovation into their proper perspective. This is definitely a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the background and effects of innovative financing. This is easily accessible for all readers, but will be especially useful for general audiences seeking a greater understanding of the issue.Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels.

Governments experiencing a budget surplus from a substantial revenue windfall, normally from natural resource exploitation (often oil), may establish a sovereign wealth fund (SWF), and at least 60 countries, eight American states, and one Canadian province have at least one SWF. As Cummine (Oxford) explains, these funds may operate in line with narrow citizen interests or for longer-term state interests; there is conflict in regard to when and for what purposes the fund will be used. All the core SWF activities of investment, management, and distribution can produce conflict between citizen and state. Cummine is particularly interested in how great state wealth might translate into greater direct benefits for the citizens. She provides a particularly useful illustration of the citizen versus state conflict in a detailed discussion of the oil-based Alaska Permanent Fund. In addition to a clear discussion of SWFs in action and of important principles for their operation, Cummine provides a useful tally of these funds, their inception date, their size, their source, and degree of democracy of sponsoring government. This is an indispensable source for any examination of SWFs.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals.