National and international institutions, inevitably influenced by differences in culture, play an important role in the process of globalization. It may be best to leave an outside commentator to reflect on the role of institutions:

"...That the advent of highly integrated commodity and financial markets has been accompanied by trade tensions and problems of financial instability should not come as a surprise, ...... The surprise is that these problems are not even more severe today, given that the extent of commodity and financial market integration is so much greater.

" One possibility in accounting (for this surprise) is the stabilizing role of the institutions built in the interim. At the national level this means social and financial safety nets. At the international level it means the WTO, the IMF, the Basle Committee of Banking Supervisors. These institutions may be far from perfect, but they are better than nothing, judging from the historical correlation between the level of integration on one hand and the level of trade conflict and financial instability on the other."

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